


The End Of Time

by felineranger



Category: Red Dwarf (UK TV)
Genre: Blood, Gore, Horror, M/M, Post series XII, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:15:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 43
Words: 67,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23216845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felineranger/pseuds/felineranger
Summary: When the crew explore a mysterious ship from the same era as Red Dwarf, they awaken something sinister.  Lister will need to face demons long-forgotten, and remember the horror of a trauma deeply buried, to have a chance at saving his crewmates - and himself - from a new nightmare.
Relationships: Dave Lister/Arnold Rimmer
Comments: 266
Kudos: 124





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Janamelie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Janamelie/gifts), [LordValeryMimes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LordValeryMimes/gifts).



> If you recognise the name of the deserted ship, then you might have an inkling of where this story is headed...

_ What had happened to him? Why did his head hurt so badly? The sofa cushion felt nice and cool against his cheek but he didn’t remember lying down. He wasn’t even sure how long he’d been asleep; it could have been hours. The room was dark. The stylish white cloth of the furnishings seemed to give off a soothing glow that appeared almost angelic to his gently rippling vision but something was wrong. He knew where he was now, but why had he fallen asleep here?  _

_ A small voice somewhere at the back of his brain was waking up now, and it was screaming at him that he was in danger and that he had to try and get out of here now; but he was so woozy and he couldn’t quite remember why. Frightened, he tried to sit up and the room rocked like a see-saw around him. He felt sick.  _

_ The thump of the chic chrome ceiling fan was too loud, as though the blades were chopping into his head with every rotation. His ears started to pound with it. His eyesight blurred and swam. He had to get out of this room or he was going to faint. He pushed himself up, staggered, and fell against the wall but managed to stay on his feet. He pressed his burning forehead to the cold white paint, breathed deeply and began to edge his way along, leaning against the wall to stay upright. _

_ Out in the hallway it was darker. The patterns on the rug seemed to twist and writhe around his feet as though they’d knot themselves around his ankles and trip him. He realised he didn’t know which way he should go. The tiny suburban house suddenly seemed the size of a football stadium and he was lost. How could he ever find the front door when he couldn’t even find his feet? Perhaps if he could find his phone he could call for somebody to come and help him. _

_ His fingertips slid around the edge of a doorframe and he leaned against it unsteadily, his knees trembling traitorously beneath him. He was standing at the top of rough wooden steps that disappeared down into darkness. The cellar. He could hide down there until he felt better. He would be nice and safe in the dark and nobody would ever find him. Gripping tightly onto the wooden rail, he crept his way down the stairs... _

Lister awoke, drenched in cold sweat, his heart pounding in his chest. “Lights.  _ Lights _ .” He sat upright and swung his legs over the side of the bunk as the dirty yellow glow illuminated the reassuringly familiar surroundings of the bunk room. He breathed deeply.

“Lister?” Rimmer mumbled from the bottom bunk. “S’wrong?”

“Nothing. Bad dream, that’s all. Everything’s fine, man.”

“Turn th’light orf.”

“Okay, okay. Lights.”

He re-acclimatised his eyes to the dark and to his surroundings, then hopped down from the bunk and headed into the bathroom. His heart was still beating too fast, his fight or flight response still tingling. He stripped off his pj’s and stepped into the shower to wash away the sticky fear sweat still clinging to his skin.

Where had  _ that _ come from? What could have triggered the nightmare? He hadn’t thought about that night in years. Frankly, with the way his life had turned out, the event had been overshadowed in terms of physical and mental trauma several times over. Besides, Lister was resilient by nature, and had bounced back from the ordeal swiftly enough.

But, smeg, the reminder of it - even that brief snippet before the true horror unfolded - had shaken him more than he would have expected. It hadn’t felt like looking back on a memory, it had felt like he was really there, reliving the moment again. The fear, the bewilderment, the helplessness, all of it overlayed with an extra layer of dread because his waking mind knew what was waiting at the bottom of those stairs, even if his dream self didn’t.

He turned his face up into the shower spray.  _ It doesn’t matter. It’s over. It was all over a long, long time ago and you survived. Just like you’ve survived everything that’s happened since. You’re fine. _ He blew out a brisk breath to steady himself and turned the shower off.

Too alert to go back to sleep and knowing better than to risk waking Rimmer again, he pulled on the nearest clothes and headed for the drive room.

Kryten looked up from the readouts in surprise as he entered. “My goodness, Mr Lister, you’re up early. What are you doing out of bed?”

“Woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. Anything happening?”

“Not really. A ship slipped onto the mid-range scanners a little while ago but no life signs.”

“Worth checking for salvage?”

“Probably not. The ship is of the same class and era as  _ Red Dwarf _ , although much smaller. Their technology is likely comparable to our own.”

Lister looked down at the screen, chin in hand. “The  _ Demeter _ . 23rd century research vessel. Researching what, I wonder?”

“Any number of things, I imagine. There were probably several different teams studying different fields.”

“What would they be doing all the way out here though?”

Kryten paused for a moment, checking his databanks. “Odd. I cannot find any reference to the vessel in my CPU.”

“Why is that odd?”

“Research vessels are usually well-documented. Someone has to fund research, after all, and it has to be worth the outlay. Besides, if this ship never returned, or indeed was never supposed to, that in itself would be noteworthy.” Kryten tapped out a quick search of  _ Red Dwarf’ _ s databanks. “Nothing here either. Curious.”

“So it’s a secret ship?”

“Either that or so utterly uninteresting that it never warranted a historical footnote.”

“Worth checking out?”

“We can if you’re interested.”

Lister tilted his head thoughtfully. Was he interested? The likelihood was they’d be met with a geology lab full of rocks and moondust, but there was always the chance of turning up something useful. Besides, maybe it was boredom, or just the fact the ship hailed from his own time, but he felt an urge to find out more. “Nothing else going on, is there? Might as well have a goosey.”

“Whatever you say, Sir. I’ll inform the others at breakfast. Speaking of which...?”

“Nah, man. Too early. I’ll wait a bit.”

“Are you sure you’re okay, Sir?”

Lister looked up, surprised. “I’m fine. Why?”

“Aside from the matter of your sleep disturbance, you seem a tad subdued. Is something troubling you?”

“No. No, just...” Lister hesitated, then forced a smile. “I had a weird dream, that’s all.”

”What about?”

”Oh, nothing really. You know how dreams are. It’ll shake off.” He looked down and saw his reflection in the glass of the monitor screen. There were bags under his eyes. “Everything’s fine.”


	2. Chapter 2

“What are we even doing here?” Cat complained as they headed towards the  _ Demeter _ ’s main drive room. “This place is old and tatty as hell. There ain’t nothing we need here.”

“I’m curious, okay?” Lister said, leading the way down the corridor with his torch held out in front of him.

“About what?” Rimmer asked, his nose wrinkled with annoyance.

“This ship is from my time.  _ Our _ time.”

“So what, this is a nostalgia trip? What do you think they’re going to have that we don’t already have on  _ Red Dwarf _ ?”

“Don’t you even want to know what it’s doing out here?”

“It’s probably been drifting in this direction ever since the crew died.”

“But why wouldn’t it have just completed its mission and turned back? The only explanation is that the crew died unexpectedly, like on the  _ Dwarf _ . And if so, why did they never send anyone to recover the ship?”

“Perhaps there was another radiation leak and it wasn’t safe.”

“I’m not picking up any background radiation,” Kryten noted, checking the psi-scan. “And even after three million years  _ Red Dwarf _ still has a fair amount of activity in certain spots.”

“It does?” Rimmer exclaimed nervously.

“Certainly. There’s no need for alarm, Sir. It’s at a safe level, but it’s higher than normal. Certainly higher than anything I’ve picked up here.”

“What about bacteria?” Rimmer went on. “Maybe some freaky alien toxin wiped them out?”

“If so it’s not registering.”

“And it doesn’t explain why there’s no records,” Lister added.

“I dunno, bud. Something about this place gives me the heebie-jeebies.” Cat looked around and shuddered.

“Look, we don’t have to stay long. We’ll just have a little snoop around, see if there’s anything worth having, and find out what the story is.”

“Why do you care?” Cat asked.

“I don’t know. I just do. I feel like...” Lister hesitated uncertainly, “...like there’s something here that wants to be found.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound sinister  _ at all _ ,” Rimmer chirped sarcastically.

“Let’s just take a look at the black box,” Lister said soothingly. “If there was anything dangerous here then it’s been dead for three million years or so.”

“So have I, and I’d like to think that I’m still lively enough to be considered a threat.”

“The only thing you’re a threat to is my last nerve. Give it a rest. Whoever these people were, they deserve for someone to know what happened to them. To tell their story.”

“Whilst I admire your emotional investment in the situation, Mister Lister, I feel I should point out that it is entirely possible that there never was a crew. The mission could have been unmanned and managed remotely.”

“So this could all be a colossal waste of time is what you’re telling us?” Rimmer sniped.

“Unmanned missions were super rare back then,” Lister said dismissively. “Rare enough that it would have been newsworthy on its own. But there’s nothing, man. Either this ship was majorly top-secret or there was a cover up for some reason. Either way, I want to know the score.”

The drive room, when they finally found it, was dark and without power. Kryten and Lister spent a fruitless half hour trying to get the console up and running without success. “So much for the black box,” Rimmer remarked sourly.

“I suppose so.” Lister grudgingly admitted defeat. “Smeg.”

“If I can isolate the device and remove it, we could bring it back to  _ Red Dwarf  _ with us,” Kryten suggested. “We can always get it hooked up and view it when we get back.”

“Yeah, okay,” Lister brightened. “While you’re excavating it from the mainframe, we’ll split up and have a look around.”

“Why do you always want to split up?” Rimmer complained. “It’s like you’ve never seen a horror movie in your life, which I  _ know _ isn’t true. This is always how trouble starts; ‘Let’s split up’, and before you know it someone’s monster chow. I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying with Kryten.”

“Fine, do what you want. Cat?”

“I’m not scared of any monsters. I eat monsters for  _ lunch _ .”

“So you’re coming?”

“I might just investigate some of the rooms down this corridor. Where some of the lights are still working.”

“I thought cats could see in the dark. You’re not letting him scare you?”

“I ain’t scared! I’m just lazy. Cats are known for it! Look it up!”

“Stay up here then. Suit yourself. I’m going to explore a bit.”

“Be careful, sir.”

“You said it yourself, there’s no life signs.”

“No, but this ship has been neglected for millions of years,” Rimmer pointed out. “It might be structurally unsound. There could be any number of dangers. Just  _ be careful _ . It’s not much to ask.”

“Okay, okay. I won’t be long.”

Lister headed down the corridor, past the defunct lifts to the stairwell and shone his torch down cautiously. It all looked safe enough. A map on the wall signposted the way to the lab area and he followed the arrows downward. If they couldn’t get the black box working, a search of the labs might at least give some idea of what the mission objective had been.

He started to walk down the stairs, careful to watch his step, and a sudden flashback took his breath away. Of another dark hallway, and stairs that were wooden, not metal, and creaked loudly underfoot as he descended. He froze with a gasp as the dream, the  _ memory _ , took hold of him again. He gripped the stair-rail. The coldness of the steel and the angular shape reassured him, anchored him back in the present. This place was not that place. He took a deep breath and carried on. The beam from the torchlight was a touch less steady than it had been previously. Smeg, that dream had really shaken him.  _ Forget it. The absolute last thing you need is to be thinking about that now, when you’re exploring a spooky old deserted ship on your own in the dark. You’re fine. Focus. _

At the bottom of the stairs, he found a series of numbered doors. Some of them were still shut tight, but a few opened. He found, as he’d speculated earlier, a lot of rocks and moondust. One room held some specimen jars that seemed to contain dried flora of different varieties. None of the freezers or mini stasis chambers were still working, and he elected not to investigate them too closely. Anything that was three million years past its sell by date wasn’t going to be either pleasant or informative to study. There was nothing to suggest any kind of top-secret research had been going on. 

As he stepped back into the corridor, he became aware of a sound close by. A humming, grinding mechanical sound. It was coming from one of the labs. Intrigued, but wary, Lister followed the noise to one of the rooms near the end of the hallway. He pulled back the door. And leapt out of his skin.

Cat rummaged half-heartedly through the old sleeping quarters, but there was nothing he wanted to make his. Everything was either basic and utilitarian, or so old and dirty as to be useless. He didn’t like this place. It was dark, nothing was shiny or clean, and there was a smell in the air that made his feckles rise. They’d been in plenty of old derelicts before, places that carried the depressing scent of dust and old death, and it didn’t tend to bother him. But there was something here that made him twitchy. The smell of old death was in this place, certainly, but it was too strong somehow. Too fresh. But that didn’t make sense. Old was old and new was new. But this was neither and both. Unsettled, he gave up his investigations and decided to return to the reassuring smell and bickering of his crewmates. 

As he turned to go, there was a sharp pain in his ankle and he yowled. A dark shape flitted across the floor and he pounced instinctively, but too late. The shape dissolved into the shadows. “Goddammit,” he complained, giving his foot a shake to ease the pain. His pride hurt more. Ten years ago, he’d have  _ obliterated _ that damn rat. The furry little mother wouldn’t have known what hit it. The stench of new death would have cut through the troubling odour in this place before it could blink. Getting old was a bitch.

Grumbling, he limped back towards the drive room.


	3. Chapter 3

“Who are you?” Lister blurted out, his heart still hammering.

In the faint trembling light of the torch, something moved with a grinding creaking noise. A decrepit droid, hunched over a counter. It ceased its work, turned, and tilted its ancient head with a painful squeak of dry hinges, studying him. It was nothing like Kryten, a far far earlier model, never designed to look remotely human, although more or less humanoid in shape. The chassis, where it wasn’t caked in rust, was bare metal. The head was box-shaped, the eyes like camera lenses, and the mouth a simple grill that glowed faintly with blue light when it spoke. “I am 2-7-3.” The voice units were muffled and crackly, the words disjointed.

“Uh, hi. You scared me. We didn’t pick up any life signs.”

“I am not a-live. I am just a droid.”

“Right, right. How long have you been here?”

“Al-ways.”

“You were part of the original crew?”

“I am just a droid.”

“What is your primary function?”

“I clean the bea-kers.” 

Lister looked around and noted that the shelves were lined with various glass jars, test tubes and other such scientific equipment, all of them sparkling clean, at odds with everything else in this deserted place. “You do a very good job,” he said kindly.

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Do you know how long you’ve been alone for?” Lister asked.

“I am not a-lone.”

“I mean, do you know when the crew died?”

“Many years ag-o.”

“How many?”

“Many many.”

“Okay. Why did they die?”

“I do not know. I am just a droid.”

Lister gave up. “Would you like to come with me?”

“I clean the bea-kers.”

“I can give you more beakers. And clean you up a bit too maybe.”

“Hmmm.” A few sparks pinged from the droid’s head as it processed this, making Lister wince. “I need to check with my com-manding officer.”

“You don’t need to check with anybody,” Lister told it soothingly. “Everybody’s gone.”

“No. Not gone.”

“Yes.”

“Not every-body.”

The words sent a chill through Lister. “What do you mean?”

“Some-one is still here.”

“Besides me?”

“Yes.”

“Someone alive?”

“No.” 

Lister relaxed slightly. The poor thing was so old and confused, it didn’t really understand. “It will be okay,” he told it. “If anyone asks, you can say I told you it was okay to go.”

“What is your name?”

“Lister.”

“Lis-ter.”

“Yeah.”

273 craned its neck towards him curiously. Its eyes zoomed out, protruding from its head in a weirdly disquieting fashion as it studied him more closely. “Dav-id Lister.”

Lister’s mouth dropped open. “...Yeah. How do you know that?”

“I know your face. You are the one it is look-ing for.”

Goosebumps prickled Lister’s skin. “What do you mean? The ship? Was that their mission? To find  _ Red Dwarf _ ?”

“No. It is look-ing for  _ you _ .”

“It?”

“The one who en-dures.”

“I think you must be confused, man.” Lister swallowed anxiously. “I don’t know this place or anyone here.”

“You are the fro-zen one. Yes?”

“I...suppose so.”

“It is look-ing for you. It must not find you. You must go.”

“There’s no-one else here,” Lister tried to explain again, as much for his own comfort as anything. “You told me so, remember. No-one else alive.”

“It is not a-live. It must not find you.”

“So what is it? The one who endures? A droid? A simulant?”

“It is some-thing old. Some-thing  _ bad _ . They did not under-stand. Go. Now. You-are-in-dan-ger-here...” the voice became even more crackly and staccato as the droid’s anxiety increased. More sparks flew from its head.

Lister held out a placating hand. “Okay. Okay. I’ll go. But come with me, yeah? I’ll fix you up, good as new. Then you can tell me everything.”

273 lurched towards him on unsteady legs, stiff from disuse. Lister wasn’t sure it would even make it up the stairs but resolved to give it a shot. 

They managed to limp up the stairway together and once the dim lights of the main deck came back into view, Lister started to feel a bit better. “Nearly there, man. It’s been a few years since you were last up here, I bet.”

“Many many.”

“I’ve got some friends for you to meet. One of them is a droid like you. He likes to clean things too.”

“Bea-kers?”

“Everything he can get his hands on. You’ll get along famously.” 

He risked probing a little further. “You said you know my face. From where?”

“The pic-ture.”

“What picture? In the data files?”

“No. Pho-to-graph. In the room.”

Lister processed this, his sense of disquiet growing. There was something very weird about all of this. “Which room? Can you show me?”

“Not safe. You m-ust go.”

“Who did it belong to? The photograph?”

“The one who en-dures.”

“What was their name?” he asked desperately.

“I do not know. I am just a droid.”

“Was it a man or a woman?”

“It was not what it seemed.”

They hobbled back into the Drive Room. Rimmer’s face contorted. “What on IO have you dragged back with you?”

“His name,” Lister replied icily, “is 273.”

“Oh goodness,” Kryten bustled over. “You are in a sorry state, my friend.”

“We can fix him up, right?”

“I’m sure we can do something, although some of these parts are very old. He will need some upgrades.”

“Fan-smegging-tastic,” Rimmer complained. “Another six weeks with droid bits all over the sleeping quarters.”

“Rimmer, shut up. He says there is something still here. Something the psi-scan isn’t picking up.”

“You must go. You are in dan-ger.”

“Oh dear.” Kryten started to fidget nervously. “Mr Cat isn’t back yet from investigating.”

“Then I’ll go find him.”

“Not. Safe.” 273 fizzed anxiously.

“I’m not going far. He was going to stay where the power was still on.”

“It m-ust not find you.”

“It won’t.” Lister was still not totally convinced the droid wasn’t mad, but he was uneasy enough to take the warning seriously. “I’ll be as quick as I can. Are you guys done here?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Then pack up and get ready to move out as soon as I get back with Cat, ok?”

The sleeping quarters spread out from the central drive room in wheel-like spokes. Lister debated shouting, but 273’s warnings held him back from drawing too much attention to himself. Instead he headed for the area that was best lit, assuming Cat would’ve done the same. He tried the rooms one by one, all of them either locked or empty.

As he prised open one door, a strong odour poured out, as thick and tangible as the heatwave from opening a hot oven. Lister gagged, hiding his mouth and nose in the crook of his arm. “What the smeg?” It was a dank musty smell, like an abandoned junk shop, or old damp dusty books. But it was mixed with something earthier, more organic, like rotting leaves at the end of a wet winter, or sludgy compost. He was vaguely reminded of the smell of his mate’s basement flat after it had flooded. Or dead flowers. He stepped inside nervously, fully expecting to find something disgusting, but the room was empty. It had obviously been someone’s quarters, there were a few basic personal artefacts scattered around, but nothing that should have made a stench like that. He was about to turn and go when something caught his eye. A photograph propped on the dresser.

He walked towards it slowly, as if it would grow teeth and attack. His hand, when he reached down to pick it up, was shaking. 273 was right about at least one thing.

The photograph was of him. And it was a real photograph. Not a poster, or a photocopy, or a grainy reprint. A real actual photograph that someone had taken of him, over three million years ago. It had been torn in half, but the half that remained showed Lister sitting on a pub bench in the beer garden of the Aigburth Arms. He was wearing a pale blue t-shirt and there were sunglasses perched on his head. There was a half-empty pint glass in front of him. He wasn’t looking straight at the camera, his attention was turned to someone who had been torn out of the picture. But he was smiling. He looked happy, and carefree. And so very young.

He didn’t remember the occasion, and didn’t remember ever seeing this picture before. But for some reason, he was suddenly filled with a hot wave of dread. He broke out in a cold sweat and dropped the photograph like he’d found a spider on it, his stomach churning. He couldn’t catch his breath. The image of his younger self lay on the floor, still eternally cheerful and unconcerned at being dropped. He spun around so he couldn’t see it. What the smeg was going on here? His eyes searched the room frantically for a clue. There was nothing. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded in a strained whisper. “How did you get that picture? How do you  _ know _ me?”

Disturbed, he bolted out of the room. And bumped straight into Cat. They both yelped. “Watch where you’re going!” Cat snapped, straightening his collar.

“Where have you been?” Lister snapped back, “I’ve been looking for you. Come on, man, we’ve gotta go.”

“Not a moment too soon. This place sucks.”

“No kidding. You were right, it gives me the heebie-jeebies too. Let’s get gone.”

Cat sniffed the air. “Peee-ewww! Did you take a dump in there, buddy?” 

“No! I did not take a dump in a random room!”

“Something stinks. I think it’s coming from under the bed...”. He leaned over Lister’s shoulder, looking around the open door. 

Lister tugged him back, heart in his throat. For some reason, he didn’t want Cat to see the photograph, and he sure as smeg didn’t want to know what that smell was. “Don’t go in there! Whatever it is, I don’t wanna know. Come on, let’s go!”

At that moment, the last of the power went out, plunging them into total darkness.


	4. Chapter 4

While they waited for Lister and Cat to return, Kryten tried his best to gain some more information from their new friend. “Do you know what they were researching here?”

“I do not know. I am just a droid.” 273 was sparking and twitching anxiously, clearly still concerned for Lister.

“Who cares?” Rimmer trilled. “Ask it about the eldritch horror that could burst out of the shadows and kill us at any moment, not whatever science fair project nonsense they were playing at.”

“The thing you fear so,” Kryten pressed gently, “did it kill the crew?”

“I do not fear it. It can-not harm me. It can-not harm you. But I fear for David Lis-ter if it finds him. It w-ants h-im.”

“Because he’s human?” Rimmer asked.

“Because he is David Lis-ter.”

Kryten and Rimmer shared a look of combined unease and frustration. “What exactly is this thing?” Rimmer asked. “Can you describe it?”

“It is ma-ny things. It was one thing once. It walked am-ongst the crew. They did not know it was not hu-man.”

“You mean a shape-shifter? Like a polymorph?”

“Like but not like.”

“What does that mean?”

“It is what it w-ants to be, but not I think any-thing it wants to be.”

“This stupid piece of scrap just talks in riddles!” Rimmer started to pace irritably. 

Kryten persisted, more gently. “Do you mean it doesn’t like what it is, or that it can change shape at will but it can’t turn into anything it wants the way a polymorph can?”

“Yes-s-s.”

“What  _ can _ it be?”

“B-B-Beasts.”

“Dangerous beasts?”

“It is not all it once w-as. It can-not be what it would li-ke. What it w-as. But it will be. If it fin-ds him. If it feeds. And still dan-ger-ous.”

“Feeds?” Rimmer asked fearfully. “What does it feed on? Emotions?”

273 turned its creaking head slowly and fixed its blank eyes on him. “No.”

Out in the corridor, the lights flickered and the droid looked up. Even without human features, it exuded dread. It gave a small static whine. “It knows he is h-ere.”

“It can affect the power?” Kryten asked dubiously.

“It has its own p-ower.”

“What do we do?” Rimmer squeaked.

“The electrics on this ship are rather volatile, Sir. I don’t think we should panic just yet.”

The lights flickered again and 273 began to tremble and spark profusely. “You must g-g-go. All of you. N-ow.”

“They aren’t back yet...”

“Then go to th-em. You must pro-tect Dav-id Lis-ter. Save h-im.”

“From what?” Rimmer was shaking. “What does it want with him?”

“It will t-t-take him,” the droid stuttered. “If you w-ant to s-ave his life, if you w-ant to s-ave his soul, then g-go. Get out. G-G-G-GET OUT.” The droid’s head exploded in a firework of sparks, sending shards of sharp metal flying across the room. Rimmer and Kryten both screeched and ducked.

And the lights went out completely.

Lister and Cat pelted down the corridor together by torchlight. Lister’s steadily increasing sense of foreboding wasn’t improved by the sound of cries up ahead. They skidded back into the drive room, shining the torches around frantically. “Guys? You okay? What’s going on, we heard you yell?!”

“We’re fine,” Rimmer straightened up. “Your friend Short-Circuit just blew himself to pieces in a panic attack.”

“Oh no. Can we fix him?”

“He’s fried. Let’s just get out of here.”

“Kryten?”

“I fear he’s beyond repair, Sir. However, he was very emphatic that we should vacate the ship as swiftly as possible; and while I don’t wish to exacerbate the current situation by causing unnecessary stress, I strongly suggest we engage leg-it mode back to Starbug post haste.”

“Agreed. Come on, guys, let’s go. Move, move, move.” 

Rimmer was halfway down the corridor before Lister had even stopped speaking. The rest of the crew followed him at speed. “What are we running from?” Cat panted. “Did I miss something?”

“I seriously smegging hope we all did,” Lister panted in response.

They piled onto Starbug and took off. Lister engaged the auto-pilot and slumped back, exhausted, in his seat. 

“Well, that was a fun excursion,” Rimmer piped up. Despite the flippant tone, his voice was a little too thin and a little too shrill to completely hide the shredded nerves behind the sarcasm. “Thanks for that little outing, Listy.”

“Don’t start. We’re fine. We’re all fine.”

“Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?” Cat raised an eyebrow.

“It’s probably nothing,” Lister insisted. “We all just got a bit spooked.”

“By what?”

“I found a droid down in the labs. It said there was something on the ship with us but, to be honest, the poor thing was so addled I’m not sure how much weight to give it.”

“It was scared enough to explode,” Rimmer remarked darkly.

“You saw the state it was in. It was probably just the strain of being out of that room and talking to people for the first time in God-knows how long.”

“Well, it didn’t know anything much about the ship or the work they were doing. Did you find anything?”

“Nothing interesting. Cat?”

“Zero. Not even any hair mousse.”

“We’ll take a look at the black box once we’re back on  _ Red Dwarf _ ,” Kryten said, a touch too cheerfully, trying to lighten the mood. “That ought to give us some answers.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Kryten noted the flatness of the reply with some concern. “Are you sad about 273, Sir? He lived a very long and fulfilling life for a droid.”

“I am a bit. It would have been nice to get him out of that place and spruce him up. He’d earned it.”

“Indeed.”

“It’s just...something’s bugging me.” Lister drummed his fingers on the console, unsure exactly how much to tell his companions. “I’m not saying he was right that there was an invisible monster on the ship with us...”

“Oh good,” Rimmer chimed in.

“...but 273  _ knew _ me. He knew my name before I said it. Someone or something on that ship, even if it was three million years ago, told him about me. And I wanted to try and find out who.”

“It’s not that surprising, Sir. You are quite famous in your own way.”

“I am?” Lister pulled a face.

“Of course. The accident on  _ Red Dwarf _ was one of the major disasters of human history, on a par with the  _ Titanic _ , the  _ Hindenburg _ , Chernobyl, and Quentin Tarantino’s short-lived career as a children’s author. Once Holly’s SOS call reached civilization and your fate was known, you became something of an icon. A symbol of both hope and tragedy.”

“Really?”

“You were also a popular meme for a short period, although I must confess I never quite understood the humour or the context.”

“So you’re telling us that not only is Lister a god to the Cat people, he’s also a legend to humanity? Ugh, and I thought this day couldn’t get any worse.” Rimmer folded his arms.

“Why don’t I know any of this?” Lister asked, perplexed.

“No disrespect, Sir, but your level of interest in human events since you left Earth is generally somewhat limited to movie releases and football scores.”

“Well, what’s the point? If I’m the only person left, it all boils down to the same thing in the end, doesn’t it?

“You’ve got the intellectual drive of a sponge,” Rimmer said, disgusted.

“You didn’t know either!”

“I can’t know everything!”

“Either way,” Kryten stepped in to diffuse the argument, “I wouldn’t let it trouble you, Sir. It’s entirely possible 273 was familiar with who you are without any sinister or monster-related explanation. Does that help?”

“Yeah,” Lister said quietly. In his mind’s eye he saw the torn photograph again, lying on the bare floor.  _ It is look-ing for you. It must not find you.  _ “It helps. Thanks Kryters.”


	5. Chapter 5

Once back, they headed to the science room to try and link up the black box from the  _ Demeter _ . Lister and Kryten tried everything they could, but the footage was unwatchable; the visuals scrambled and the audio indecipherable. “That’s weird, right?” Lister looked to Kryten for confirmation. “The black box is supposed to be indestructible.”

“The box itself appears undamaged, but the AV files seem to have been fatally corrupted. It’s almost like it’s been magnetised, but that would have wiped everything.”

“There’s more on there?”

“Text files - the captain’s log. They seem unaffected.”

“Let’s see.”

Lister pulled up a chair and squinted at the monitor, Rimmer and Kryten peering over his shoulders as the luminous green text spilled across the black screen. After a while he lost patience. “This is boring as smeg, it’s all just day-to-day stuff. Skip to the final week of entries.” The screen scrolled down in a green blur before stopping again.

_ “March 21st 2183- Meekins died in the night. There are only five of us left, and our fate is sealed. We are too far out for aid to reach us in time, and even if we could somehow make port before the affliction takes hold, they will never let the ship dock once they know what has transpired here. The risk is too high. We incinerated Meekins’ remains as per protocol, although I doubt protocol will save us now.  _

_ March 22nd 2183- No symptoms reported so far by remaining crew, myself included, but it is only a matter of time. Morale is understandably poor. First officer Simmons in particular is showing signs of mental strain. He is having night terrors. Believes there is something cursed on the ship with us. I am afraid he may be a danger to himself, but in our current terrible circumstances there is little we can do for him. _

_ March 23rd 2183- Petrofsky could not get out of bed this morning. Showing all the classic signs of the affliction. Pale, fatigued, low platelet count. I fear Simmons’ paranoia has affected him, he too is suffering nightmares. Claims to have seen a creature in his room last night. Something huge that lurked in the shadows, like a wolf standing on its hind legs, but with a snub bat-like snout. He insisted that we seal him in his quarters and leave him to die. I tried to reason with him that we might as well care for him in his final hours, as we are all doomed, and isolating him will not protect us. “I’m not doing it to protect you,” he told me, “I’m doing it to protect myself.” _

_ March 24th 2183 - Simmons is steadily losing his grip on sanity. Petrofsky’s dream of the beast has shaken him to his core. Insisted that the four of us search every corner of the ship; a search which naturally uncovered nothing out of the ordinary. I hoped this would calm him, but no such luck. He has convinced himself of a supernatural explanation for our sorry situation and will not be swayed. _

_ March 25th 2183- Simmons is gone. No trace of him can be found anywhere on the ship. I sadly suspect his mind snapped and he went into the airlock, more afraid of the monster he’d created in his imagination than the cold reality of death itself. It is an unfortunate end to a good man and a good officer, but probably not as premature as it should have been. Marquez and Huang are both infected, and no doubt my own time grows short. _

_ March 26th 2183 - Caring for Marquez and Huang to the best of my ability but they are fading fast and delirious. Both of them claim to have seen the beast. To my own shame, I am beginning to feel afraid. I have never been a superstitious man, and am resigned to my inevitable fate, and am all too aware that the power of suggestion combined with fear and fever can make a person see things. Yet as their condition worsens and I am faced with the prospect of being left alone here with whatever stalks these corridors - be it sickness or the demonic entity that has haunted my crew’s nightmares - I feel a heavy darkness creeping over my soul. _

_ March 27th 2183 - I have seen it. Not in the grip of sleep or fever, but here in the drive room with my waking eyes. I have sealed the doors. The others are already dead, but I will not let it take me. I will not face my end staring into those terrible red eyes. Once I have completed this message and the coast is clear, I shall follow Simmons into the airlock and the blissful escape of the void. I have sent a final SOS which I pray will reach home before they send the previously requested rescue mission. I have told them to stay away, to send a beacon telling every ship, every world, not to make contact with the Demeter. To forget this ship ever existed. Let these metal walls be the cursed creature’s coffin, and if it cannot know death then let it walk alone here until the end of time. This is Captain Harker of the Demeter, signing off for the last time.” _

Lister sat back, letting out his breath in a slow stream. “Wow.”

“I feel sick,” Rimmer said, hugging himself. The green glow of the screen on their grim faces gave them all a sympathetically sickly tinge.

“I suppose that explains why there’s no real record of the ship. Monster or no monster, the powers that be obviously didn’t want rumours spreading,” Lister said thoughtfully. “A deadly disease, a possible alien threat? If this transcript had got out then there would have been mass panic, not just amongst all the ships working the solar system, but the colonies too.”

“And at a time when people were already worried about the risks of interstellar travel,” Kryten remarked knowingly. “Look at the dates. Almost a year to the day following the radiation leak that wiped out the crew of  _ Red Dwarf _ . No wonder they buried the story.”

“So lemme get this straight,” Cat pitched in, “was there a monster chasing us or not?”

“No,” Lister said dismissively. “Don’t be daft.”

“Why is it daft?” Rimmer demanded. “273 certainly didn’t think it was. The crew of the  _ Demeter _ all saw  _ something _ .”

“Rimmer, all of this was three million years ago. Anything that was there is fossilised by now. And by the sounds of it, by the end they were all half-mad with sickness and despair. What they saw was most likely the manifestation of their own fears. That can happen in those kind of situations, when people are scared and under pressure. Group hallucinations and stuff, right Krytes?”

“It’s been known,” Kryten gave guarded agreement.

“Besides, 273 didn’t know what killed the crew, it said so.”

“But it knew there was something on the ship, even if it couldn’t explain what.”

“While you were looking for Mr Cat, we spoke briefly about it,” Kryten added. “It seemed to believe the creature was a shape-shifter that had posed as human to infiltrate the crew.”

“Maybe so, but it would still be long dead. Even GELF’s don’t live forever. If there was anything still there, it would have shown up on the psi-scan.”

“If it’s something that doesn’t show up on the psi-scan, who’s to say we didn’t bring it back with us?” Rimmer frowned.

“Sanity?” Lister suggested.

“Why are you being so flippant about this? You’ve seen what’s out there.”

“Because I don’t believe in ghosts,” Lister countered firmly. “And while we’ve come across our fair share of scaries over the years, none of them have been supernatural. I’d be more concerned about the illness that wiped them out, but after three million years any bacteria’s probably dead too.”

“So...everything’s cool?” Cat asked tentatively.

“I think so,” Lister said wearily. “It’s sad though. I kinda wish we hadn’t gone.”

“Kinda??? You’re the one who insisted on raking all this up.” Rimmer glared at him.

“I know, I know.”

“It feels like we’ve ended up with more questions than we started with,” Kryten remarked balefully. “We still don’t know what really happened on that ship.”

“Or what scrambled the black box security footage. How do we explain that?” Rimmer pointed out.

“Maybe the captain did it before he killed himself?” Lister suggested.

“How? Without destroying the whole hard drive?”

“Maybe it was faulty. Or it developed a glitch after several thousand years. It doesn’t matter. We know now why the ship got written out of history, and we know the poor bastards all died horribly, either by disease or rogue GELF. And I don’t know about you guys, but I really don’t want to think about it anymore.” Lister pushed his chair back and walked out.

Rimmer watched him go and a worrisome thought crossed his mind. “Do you think we should tell him what the droid said?” he asked nervously. “That the thing on the ship was hunting for him? I mean him specifically?”

Kryten looked doubtful. “I’m not sure it matters now, Sir. Any danger there was seems to have passed, and 273 was clearly in a highly fragile condition. Perhaps it’s best to say no more about it and put this upsetting episode behind us.”

“I just...can’t shake this awful churning feeling in my gut that something isn’t right here. It’s like I’ve touched something putrid and can’t wash it off.”

“Yeah,” Cat agreed. “The stench of that place is gonna linger with me for some time.”

“What did you smell?” Kryten asked, intrigued.

“I don’t know what it was, buddy, all I can tell you is it stank like Hell.”


	6. Chapter 6

Lister lay in bed that night, turning everything over in his mind. 

273’s insistence that there was something dangerous on the  _ Demeter _ could simply have been down to repeating what it had heard from the increasingly paranoid crew as the situation deteriorated. The droid hadn’t had a very detailed grasp of what went on outside its lab, and was not designed to have any imagination, so probably took anything said to it literally. It had been told there was a creature, it had not been told said creature had left or died, so had reached the ‘logical’ conclusion it was still onboard. Why it had made a connection between the supposed beast and whoever owned that photograph of Lister was less clear, but it could be down to a simple misunderstanding. 

Horrifying though the captain’s log had been, he was ultimately an unreliable witness. A man under unimaginable duress, helpless to stop the nightmare unfolding before him. Perhaps none of what he’d written was even true; the sickness, the mysterious disappearance of Simmons, the beast. Perhaps he had gone insane and killed them all himself. Without the black box security footage it was impossible to be certain. 

The psi-scan, though notoriously slow and glitchy, had not detected anything. None of them had  _ actually _ seen or heard anything strange while they were there; even the flickering lights and power issues, while spooky at the time, were easily explained and probably wouldn’t have concerned them in any other circumstances. Their collective anxiety had been entirely fuelled by 273’s warnings. And yet...his discomfort remained.

He still couldn’t decide why he didn’t want to share the discovery of the photograph with the others. Perhaps there was no big mystery. Perhaps the photo had simply belonged to someone he’d known back in Liverpool who had gone on to join the space corps and had been proud of their connection to the man destined to become the last human. Someone who maybe still thought fondly of him. He’d had plenty of friends back then (although none that he could imagine signing up for a space jaunt, particularly on a research ship of all things). If only the  _ Demeter’s _ mainframe had still been working, he could have checked the crew list for any familiar names. It was a long shot but by no means impossible.

Yet he couldn’t rationalise his own reaction to finding the image. Yes, it had been a shock. And the unexpected snapshot of his past had felt unpleasantly like seeing a ghost. But the feeling had been one of horror, bordering on revulsion, and he couldn’t explain why. At least not  _ entirely _ . 

However it had come to be there, the existence of the photograph forced him to an uncomfortable but unavoidable conclusion - that 273 was not as confused as he’d thought. And if the droid had been right about that…what else might it have been right about?

  
  


_ The late afternoon sun was warm on his shoulders. Outside the back door of the pub, the bright flowers in the hanging baskets were wilting from the long hot summer. The garden was crowded, filled with the melody of lilting scouse banter. The smell of chips hovered tantalisingly in the air, overshadowed by the smell of lager as he lifted the cold pint to his lips. He sat at the scarred old bench, its surface tattooed with initials and swear words, surrounded by an assortment of friends and acquaintances; Harry, Kev, Ed, Hubcaps and Jonesy. He felt an elbow dig playfully into his ribs. _

_ “Oi-oi. Ya stalker’s back.” _

_ “Huh?” He glanced around and saw Shawna across the garden. She was sitting cross-legged on the grass, a magazine perched on her lap and a pint glass full of coke with a straw in her left hand. Their eyes met, and she quickly dipped her head, hiding behind a curtain of silky straight dark hair, before nervously glancing up again. He smiled and gave her a little wave, which she shyly returned before hiding her face again. _

_ “Just go and talk to her.” _

_ “I’m not sure she wants me to.” _

_ “Of course she does. She follows you around like a homing pigeon.” _

_ “Any time I try and talk to her, she scarpers after three words.” _

_ “Because she luuuurves you.” _

_ “Even if I was into her, how are you supposed to go out with someone who won’t actually speak to you?” _

_ “Maybe she doesn’t want you to. Maybe she wants you to march over there, take her face in your big manly hands, and snog her tits off.” Harry reached over and squished his face between his hands, threatening to demonstrate. _

_ “Eww. Get off. Look, she’s not my type, okay?” _

_ “And your hands aren’t that big.” _

_ “She’s too shy, man. I like girls with a bit of attitude, a bit of bite, you know?” _

_ “Who knows?” Ed smirked. “You get her alone, you might find out she’s got sharper teeth than you think.” _

_ He felt his cheeks going pink, and focused his attention on flicking a horsefly from the pale blue sleeve of his t-shirt. “I doubt it somehow.”  _

_ “Aww, he’s getting embarrassed.” _

_ “She can’t be  _ **_that_ ** _ shy. She left you those flowers at work. How many girls would do that?” _

_ “I don’t know it was her. There was no name.” _

_ “Who else would it have been?” _

_ “Oh, eh, thanks a lot!” _

_ “You should at least thank her.” _

_ “And if it wasn’t her then I’ll look like a twat.” _

_ “Maybe he’s just  _ **_hoping_ ** _ it was someone else,” Jonesy grinned. “How’s Hayley these days?” _

_ “Alright, enough about me. I’m going to the loo.” He stood up and climbed over the seat. “Find someone else to pick on while I’m gone.” _

_ “Careful she doesn’t follow you.” _

_ “You’re not funny.” _

_ As he turned his back on his friends, the blue summer sky above suddenly turned black. The sun winked out, as if eclipsed by some great shadow. He couldn’t see a thing. The noise of the pub faded away to silence, leaving only the sound of his own unsteady breath...and something else. The soft continuous whump-whump-whump of a ceiling fan. His stomach contracted in fear. “No,” he breathed. His eyes adjusted to the darkness and he was staring down a flight of wooden steps, his head spinning, his balance shaky, knees trembling. “ _ **_No_ ** _.” _

_ He started to descend, his body not under his own control. “No!” he screamed, but no sound came out, and his body would not listen to him. “Stop! Don’t go down there! Get out of the house!  _ **_GET OUT!!!_ ** _ ” _

Lister’s eyes flew open and he reeled, the dizziness from his dream following him into reality. He was standing in front of the door to the sleeping quarters, one arm stretched out in front of him as if reaching for the door release. Or trying to keep something back. Shocked and disorientated, he toppled backwards, legs buckling, and fell down with a thud, his head still whirling. “What...what the…?” he gasped out breathlessly.

“Lister?!” Rimmer was sitting up, staring at him with alarm. “Are you okay? What the smeg is going on?”

“I...I fell,” Lister croaked, getting unsteadily back to his feet. “I woke up and I was standing in front of the door and....”

“You were sleep-walking?” Rimmer’s brow creased. “Has that ever happened before?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so. Not that I remember.” He tottered back to his bunk and scrambled in, burrowing determinedly down into the covers as if they would secure him and stop it happening again. 

“What were you dreaming about?”

“I don’t remember,” Lister lied.

“Well, at least it wasn’t a toilet dream,” Rimmer yawned, clearly losing interest. “I had a few of those as a kid. And as a teenager. And once as an adult but that was only because...never mind. You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah. I just wanna go back to-” Beneath him, he heard a high nasally snore, “- sleep.” He rolled his eyes. “Thanks for your deep concern,” he muttered. Despite the feigned annoyance, he felt calmer. Everything was fine and the world was as it should be.

He curled onto his side, clinging to his pillow like an anchor. It had been a very rough day, following on from a rough night; a bitter sundae of churned up bad memories and high stress, topped off with the cherry of a disturbing discovery that had been tough on them all. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe normally. The  _ Demeter _ was behind them and getting further away every second. Tomorrow they could start getting back to normal.

_ -It is something old. Something bad . They did not understand. It must not find you. _

_ \- There is something cursed on the ship with us. - I have seen it with my waking eyes. _

_ -I want to go home. Please, let me out, I just want to go home...please… _

Lister’s fingers clenched into fists and he pulled the pillow over his head, trying to match his breathing to the calming rhythm of Rimmer’s snores.

  
  
  



	7. Chapter 7

“Mister Lister? Sir? Sir, wake up.”

“Wassup?” Lister grumbled, reluctantly emerging from under his pillow. He didn’t remember going back to sleep but he must have drifted off eventually. It felt like he’d been awake half the night. He was drained.

“It’s the Cat, Sir. He needs some medical assistance. Can you help me get him to the medi-bay?”

Fear drenched Lister like ice water, and he scrambled out of bed. “What do you mean ‘medical assistance’? He’s not...it’s not…?” Captain Harker’s words played ominously in his head;  _ Pale, fatigued, low platelet count... _

“There’s no need for panic, Sir. He’s not unwell, he’s just injured his ankle.”

Lister leaned against the bunk, one hand over his heart in relief. “Smeg. Don’t scare me like that, man. Open with that next time, ok? ‘The Cat’s hurt his ankle’. It’s good to be specific about these things when we spent yesterday exploring a possible plague pit.”

“Sorry, Sir.”

“What’s going on now?” Rimmer’s tousled head appeared from the bottom bunk.

“Nothing. Cat’s busted his ankle. We’re going to take him to get checked out. You can help if you want?” Lister suggested brightly, already knowing the answer.

“Yyyyy….pass.” Rimmer rolled over.

“You know, with your hard-light drive you could probably carry him down there by yourself.”

“So could you if you weren’t a curry-stuffed limp cabbage leaf of a man who went to the gym once in a while.”

“Smeghead.”

“Cabbage leaf.”

“Sir, the Cat…?” Kryten said pointedly.

“Yeah, okay. I’m coming.”

Once they’d stretchered an unsurprisingly ungrateful Cat to a medibed, Kryten gingerly rolled up his trouser leg to take a look. “I noticed him limping when he came looking for breakfast this morning, but he wouldn’t let me see properly,” he explained to Lister.

“I’m fine,” Cat grumbled. “It’s nothing. I am as fit as a fiddle. A fiddle with an ass that won’t quit.”

“Uh-huh,” Lister replied dryly. “So why is your ankle the size and shape of a baseball?”

“ _ You’re _ the size and shape of a baseball! Leave me alone!”

“Come on, what did you do?”

Cat folded his arms defensively. “I had a little mishap while hunting, that’s all.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. What have I told you about mucking around chasing stuff and leaping off things? I keep telling you you’re gonna do yourself a mischief. You’re not as young as you were.”

“Says you!”

“Yes, says me. I’m not as young as I was either, sadly.” Again, the image of that photograph hovered on the edge of his consciousness. He shook it away.

“Is it broken, Krytes?”

“It’s too swollen for me to be certain, Sir. I’ll have to take some scans.”

“Okay. Need any help?”

“I can take it from here.”

“Alright then.  _ You _ ,” he pointed at Cat, “be good. Do what Kryten says. If you’re good I’ll bring you a treat later.”

“What if I don’t want to be good?”

“Then you get the cone of shame.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me,” Lister raised an eyebrow. It was both ridiculous and hilarious that a creature deft enough to hand-sew lace couldn’t work out how to unclip a simple vet collar, but it had its uses.

Leaving Kryten with his cantankerous patient, Lister headed somewhere he’d rarely been before: the library. The conversation yesterday had stirred his curiosity, and he was ready to find out a little more about the universe he’d left behind, and his own legacy within it. He settled at a computer and began to do some research. There wasn’t as much as he’d hoped; there were still thousands if not millions of years of news, history, and updates that had not yet caught up with them in the outer reaches of deep space. He skimmed through ancient news articles, and extracts from various books and lectures. He stared for quite a long time at an image of a bronze statue of himself in Liverpool, wearing a technicians uniform and holding a cat protectively in his arms. It wasn’t a bad likeness. 

When he’d satisfied some of his own vain curiosity, he changed tack and began to research some other names. None of his former associates seemed to have left an indelible imprint on human history as far as he could tell. Unless, like the  _ Demeter _ , they’d been quietly written out of the story. There was one name that he started to type out, paused, then erased from the search bar. Nothing good was going to come of opening those scars any further. He stared at the blinking cursor, his mind wandering. 

He couldn’t be sure if the dream last night - the first part of it at least - had been a real memory or not. It certainly could have been, although he didn’t remember it specifically. He’d spent any number of lazy summer days in that pub, with more or less the same group of people, he didn’t remember every occasion in detail. Had seeing the photograph triggered the memory, or had it created a false one? Had the picture really been taken  _ that _ particular summer? Just days, maybe even hours before... _ Don’t think about it. _

The cursor blinked steadily in front of his eyes, almost hypnotic in its persistent rhythm. He could even hear the sound of it, soft and incessant.  _ Whump-whump-whump _

_ …the ceiling fan spun ceaselessly above him... _

He jerked upright as a sudden rush of adrenaline jolted through him like electricity. His fingers gripped the desk, his pulse stuttering. He’d almost fallen asleep in his chair. Unsurprising perhaps, given the previous two nights of interrupted rest. But the second he had started to drift, the flashback had started creeping in. What was wrong with him? Was he ever going to be able to sleep properly again?

He pushed himself purposely away from the computer and stood up, his back creaking. “No,” he said out loud to the empty library, and to himself, his voice firm and authoritative. “I am not thinking about this anymore. I refuse.” He walked out and went to find out how Cat was getting on.

When he returned to the medibay, Cat’s foot was bandaged and elevated. Kryten was reading through some test results while Rimmer hovered nearby. “Oh, you decided to join us then?” Lister remarked sweetly. “Now the heavy lifting’s done.”

“I’m not heavy,” Cat objected moodily.

“You’re not light either. You feeling okay?”

“My foot hurts.”

“A lot?”

“Enough. And these bandages don’t match my outfit.”

“You can have some more painkillers in half an hour, Sir.” Kryten fluffed his pillows attentively.

“What’s he done then?” Lister asked warily. The foot wasn’t in a plastercast so he guessed it wasn’t too serious.

“I’m not entirely certain, to be perfectly honest,” Kryten admitted. “There doesn’t appear to be a break or a sprain. I thought he might have just twisted it, but the swelling didn’t respond to ice so I ran a quick blood test.”

“And?”

“There’s definitely an infection of some sort. The markers are high but not catastrophic, he’s in no danger of sepsis, at least not at the moment. I’ve started him on a course of antibiotics.”

“How did it get infected?” Rimmer asked. “Did he cut it?”

“I couldn’t see an abrasion, but then the skin was very bruised.”

“Do you remember what you did?” Lister asked.

“I didn’t do anything!”

“Cat…” Lister said warningly.

“I didn’t! It was that damn rat!”

“A rat?” Kryten repeated, surprised.

“I nearly had it too! I was fast as lightning! I was just bored, so I  _ let _ it get away.”

“Of course.” Rimmer raised a disbelieving eyebrow.

“I didn’t think there were rats down in the storage hold,” Lister said, concerned. “Weevils, yeah, but not rats.”

“We should investigate. An infestation could devastate our supplies.”

“Forget the supplies. What if they start evolving like Moggy here? Can you  _ imagine _ ?” Rimmer shuddered at the thought of a ship overrun with giant obnoxious rat-people.

“How long ago did this happen?” Lister asked Cat, annoyed. “Why didn’t you tell us? Aside from anything else, if that bite had become septic, it could have made you really ill. You could have lost your foot.”

“Be cool, it only just happened. Besides, when did I have time to tell you guys anything? I’d only just found you taking a crap in that stinky hole of a room, and next thing I know the lights are out and we’re all running like hell from some invisible monster.”

“You took a crap in someone’s room?” Rimmer screwed his face up.

“No! I didn’t take- look, never mind! Are you telling me this happened yesterday? On the  _ Demeter _ ?”

“Yeah. So what?”

Lister could feel the blood draining from his face, at the same rate as dread was filling him from head to toe. “Cat,” he said quietly and slowly. “There. Weren’t. Any. Life. Signs.”

“It was just a rat. There was no-one there.”

“It doesn’t matter! The psi-scan should have picked up a rat! It should pick up a smegging cockroach! It’ll even pick up a droid if they’ve got any organic components like Kryten has. But it told us there was  _ nothing _ alive on that ship!”

“So what does that mean?” Cat asked blankly. Lister put his face in his hands in despair.

“It means, Sir,” Kryten said awkwardly, “the psi-scan may have been faulty. There may have been something on the  _ Demeter _ with us after all.”

“And if it wasn’t faulty?” Rimmer asked, his face deathly pale.

Lister raised his head from his hands. His eyes had a frightened, hunted look. “Then whatever bit him wasn’t a smegging rat.”


	8. Chapter 8

Leaving Cat in the medibay, the three of them rushed to the drive room. “We’ll scan the ship: a full sweep just to be sure. With any luck our sensors will be more reliable than the psi-scan.” Lister plonked himself in front of a console. “Speaking of which, we should test it again.”

“I’m on it now, Sir.” Kryten went over to the storage cupboard where he’d left the device the day before. “Oh.”

“What is it?” Rimmer looked over. “What now?”

“It’s not working.” Kryten gave the thing a shake. “The battery is completely dead.”

“You only charged it yesterday.”

“I know, Sir.”

“Okay,” Lister’s spirits lifted slightly. “so the psi-scan is kaput. That explains a few things.”

“It was working yesterday.”

“It was on. That doesn’t mean it was working correctly.”

Rimmer and Kryten shared a nervous glance, both thinking the same thing. “When the lights went screwy, right before everything went out, 273 said the thing...the shapeshifter...could affect the power,” Rimmer said nervously.

“So?”

“Maybe  _ it _ messed-up the psi-scan. Drained the battery, manipulated the results.”

“Or maybe the psi-scan is just old as balls and the battery finally packed in. Let’s not start jumping to conclusions.” Lister didn’t look up from the monitor, scrutinising the scan results as they came in.

When the report finally ended with a satisfying ‘blip’, he sat back, relieved. “Nothing. At least, nothing suspicious.”

“I don’t like this,” Rimmer said stubbornly. “I’ve got a bad feeling about the whole thing.”

“Of course you do. You’re a pathological coward and an unfailing pessimist. You always think the worst.”

“ _ Something _ bit Cat.”

“Yeah. A  _ rat _ . He saw it. ”

“You said it yourself; if the psi-scan was right then it  _ wasn’t _ a smegging rat.”

“I know what I said,” Lister snapped. “I was being stupid, we’re all on edge. We obviously can’t trust the psi-scan results; we’ve established that. We should be able to trust the _Dwarf_ ’s sensors though, and there’s nothing. No life signs that aren’t either one of us, or registering as spiders or weevils or such like.” 273’s warning rang in Lister’s ears - _It is not alive._ He did his best to ignore it. “If the thing Harker was raving about in the log had popped up, don’t you think he would have noticed? I feel like it would have done more than nipped his ankle and scarpered.”

“‘It is not all it once was’,” Kryten said ominously behind them.

Lister turned to stare at him, “Huh?”

“It’s what 273 said, Sir. It said the beast could change shape, become other things, but it wasn’t as powerful as it had been. But it would be again, if it could feed.”

“And it fed on Cat.” Rimmer massaged his H fretfully.

Lister fought back the anxiety clawing at the doors of his mind, trying to force its way in. “You two are getting way too worked up about this. We have no reason to think…”

“Yes, Lister. We  _ do _ . 273 told us there was something dangerous on the Demeter. The captain’s log backed that up. And now we know that the psi-scan readings were useless and something attacked the Cat.”

“Attacked? He didn’t even think it was worth mentioning! You are overreacting.”

“You’re under-reacting! You’re burying your head in the sand because you’re scared and you don’t want it to be true.”

“I am not scared!” Lister’s voice rose hotly.

“Well, maybe you should be. Out of all of us, you should probably be the most scared, because whatever it is, it’s looking for you.”

Lister’s heart skipped a beat. “Why would you think that?”

“Because 273 said so. It was adamant that whatever that thing was, it was after you.”

Lister took a deep breath to calm himself. Of course, it made sense 273 would have repeated its fears to the others. “I know,” he admitted. “It told me that too. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Why not?”

“Because 273 was old, and on the brink of breakdown, and because it simply doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense, okay? You know what  _ does _ make sense? We found an old ship with a mysterious past, and an old droid with a spooky tale to tell, and it gave us all goosebumps. The psi-scan, which has been slow and unstable for years, finally packed in and didn’t detect there were still a few vermin running around. Cat got nipped by a rat while snooping, the power went out, and we all screamed and ran back to Starbug like a bunch of kids who heard a twig snap in the woods after sharing ghost stories by the campfire.”

He looked at the still worried faces before him, and sighed heavily. “We’ve been back twenty-four hours and nothing bad has happened. Apart from a mild infection, which is to be expected, Cat is fine. He doesn’t have whatever weird disease Harker was talking about.  _ I _ am fine. No vengeful monster has lunged out of the shadows to eat me. There’s nothing on the scans. Unless you two have any suggestions, I really don’t know what else we can do.”

Rimmer gave a grudging shrug. “I’ve got nothing.”

“Nor me, I’m afraid.”

“Okay then. Let’s all just calm down, give Cat his medicine, have some dinner, and chill the smeg out. We’ll be cautious for a few days; stay on the habitation decks, keep an eye on the scans, keep an eye on Cat. But I really don’t think there’s anything to worry about.”

Behind him, on the report screen, unnoticed by any of them, the number of life forms onboard decreased by one as a lone weevil mysteriously ceased to be.

  
  


_ The damn lift was out of order again. Nothing ever worked in this smegging place. He really needed to save up some money and try to find somewhere else. He checked his watch as he jogged up the stairs to his flat. There was still time to have a shower and get changed, perhaps even grab a bite to eat, before he met the rest of the guys down at the Aigburth Arms. And maybe the exercise would even do him some good… _

_ Outside the door to his flat he had to stop for a minute to dig through his pockets for the key and get his breath back ( you’ve really gotta stop smoking smeghead). But as he slotted the key into the lock, he suddenly realised something was wrong. The door was already unlocked. He peered at the keyhole and groaned aloud. He’d been broken into again. Curse this smegging crappy apartment block! Seething, he gave the door a kick and it swung open. Better see how bad the damage was. _

_ Inside, he looked around in surprise. Everything still seemed to be in place: the telly in the corner, the stereo and CD’s on the shelf; everything. He sighed with relief. Someone must have caught them and chased them off before they could take anything. At least he was having some luck today then; although the door was going to need fixing. He shoved the sagging armchair across the room to block it off for the time being; he didn’t want anyone wandering in while he was in the shower. After giving himself a brisk scrub-down in the tiny cracked cubicle, he wrapped a towel around his waist and darted across the lounge to his bedroom so he could find some (hopefully) clean clothes and get dressed. He stopped dead in shock in the bedroom doorway. _

_ He stared at the sight in front of him, frozen to the spot. He thought for a moment he was going to be sick, the smell was so overpowering.  _

_ There were dead flowers scattered all across his bed; slightly wilted and crushed, as though someone had rolled around over them. Their pungent fragrance filled the room with the scent of decay. _

_ Pulling himself together, he threw off the towel and started to frantically pull on his clothes. He was getting the smeg out of here. That loony bitch could still be lurking around close by and he wasn’t going to wait to see if she was coming back. This had gone way too far. The flowers she had sent him had been sweet, if perhaps a bit sad. The notes she had been putting through his door at night had crossed the line into creepy. But this? - this was plain psychotic.  _

_ He shoved his feet into his trainers, patted his pockets to make sure he had his wallet and phone, then hauled the armchair out of the way of the door and took off down the stairs. He went to the Warden’s office on the ground floor and banged on the door. “What? No, I didn’t see any girl, mate. I been busy in here all day. I’ll call the locksmith out to fix the door if you want, but don’t reckon there’s much point gettin’ the old bill out. Not if nobody saw her and she didn’t take nuffin’. They won’t give a shit.” _

_ Angry and frustrated, he stomped out into the street. He didn’t even know where he was going, it was still way too early to meet the others, he just knew he didn’t want to be anywhere near here right now. And then... he wasn’t. _

_ Whump-whump-whump. The ceiling fan pulsed out its relentless beat as he stared down the black stairwell and he was trapped, trapped forever in this house, in this nightmare; and once again he found himself heading down those dark steps, pulled by an invisible force that could not be resisted, would not be denied.  _

_ As he reached the bottom of the stairs, dim candlelight cast flickering shadows into the corners, throwing light onto things that he didn’t want to see, did not want to remember. He saw himself, a hundred times over in sketches and photographs smothering the walls. There he was at work, at his flat, in the garden of the pub just a few days ago; a few of the photos he’d even posed for. He had not posed for the drawings. At least, not that he’d been aware of. One image, painted in simple grey charcoal lines showed him curled peacefully asleep in his bed. He looked around, the fear inside him growing claws and fangs as he took in the room - everything in it, and about it, even its horribly familiar smell - and started to understand the reality of what was happening, of the danger he was in. And in the furthest, darkest corner of the cellar, there was…. _

Rimmer awoke, shivering. The room was freezing. The door was wide open, the light from the hallway spilling in. “Lister?” He climbed out of bed and went to the door, just meaning to shut it. He stopped and stared. Lister was walking slowly away down the corridor. The lights above his head flickered and crackled in turn as he passed under them. Rimmer felt a chill go through him that had nothing to do with the cold air. “Lister? Lister!” There was no response. 

Rimmer hesitated for the briefest moment. Wasn’t there some rule against waking a person who was sleep-walking? Wasn’t it supposed to be dangerous? The lights hummed and flared bright before stuttering like strobes and Rimmer decided that the rules could smeg right off. He ran to Lister, reached for him, his hand seeming to move in slow motion in the pulsing light, and grabbed hold of his arm.

And Lister spun to face him with a ferocious snarl.


	9. Chapter 9

Down in the medibay, Kryten was keeping a faithful watch over Cat as he slept, carefully monitoring his obs for any sign of increased fever or sickness. So far he’d remained stable, and the swelling finally appeared to be going down. The antibiotics were working.

As he was carrying out his hourly checks, the screens in the room began to flicker and crackle. He gave the medi-computer a firm thump but it made no difference. His non-eyebrows turned down into a frown. The last thing they needed was for the medibay to be out of commission. The lights in the room suddenly dimmed and flared in quick succession, and Kryten realised the computer wasn’t the problem. The lights began to pulse, waking Cat. “What’s going on?” he sat up, “Are we having a party?”

“I’m afraid not, Sir. We seem to be suffering some electrical interference.”

“How come?”

“I’m not sure. Possibly there’s some kind of external phenomenon nearby causing the issue. I recall something about an electrical storm up ahead, but it was still some distance away on the radar earlier. We shouldn’t have reached it yet.”

The lights flared again, then went out, along with all of the screens. Kryten turned on the night-light in his chest monitor. “Oh dear, oh dear. This is most sub-optimal.”

“Fix it, buddy.”

“I’ll have to fetch Mr Lister for assistance. I’m not sure if the problem is local or ship-wide. Will you be okay by yourself for a little while, Sir?”

“I dunno,” Cat said. “I’m not feeling great.”

“What’s the matter?” Kryten immediately hurried over and put a hand to his forehead.

“I can’t explain it. I just feel...weird.” He sniffed the air. “Something’s not right.”

“What isn’t?”

“Can’t you smell it yet? It’s like...rot.”

“Oh goodness. I hope the power outage hasn’t affected the waste systems.”

“No, that’s not it. It smells like that spooky old ship. Like something nasty.”

Kryten sniffed nervously, turning his nasal sensors to maximum sensitivity, and thought he could just about detect something. It was unpleasant but oddly indistinct in nature. “You’re certain it’s the same smell?”

“Positive, bud. I’ve never smelt anything like it before. And it’s getting stronger. I’m telling you, something’s coming.” 

Kryten’s anxiety chip started to hum as he remembered 273’s warnings back on the  _ Demeter _ as the electrics had started to fail. He was torn. Whatever the ship’s scans said, he trusted Cat’s instincts and he didn’t feel he could leave him alone, either to go and investigate further, or to alert the others. But with the memory of his fellow droid’s terror, and the haunting words of Harker’s log still much too fresh in his memory, every diode in his body was screaming with the urge to go to his human master and warn him of the possible danger. If 273 had been right, whatever was making that smell was here for one reason.  _ Pro-tect Dav-id Lis-ter. _

The decision was taken out of his hands, as Cat suddenly sat up straighter, eyes dilating, and bared his teeth. “It’s in here.”

Kryten looked around fearfully. “I can’t see anything!”

“It’s here,” Cat insisted.

“Sir, are you sure you’re not…?” The words died in Kryten’s throat as a dark shape flashed across the far wall, illuminated by the dim glow of his chest monitor. “Oh my,” he squeaked.

Cat gave a low throaty growl next to him. “Get it away from me!”

“I can’t see where it is!”

Cat was panting now, and sweating. His ankle started to throb. “It’s making me feel sick!”

“The smell?”

“No.  _ It _ . Whatever it is. Get it outta here!”

His eyes frantically scanning the room, Kryten edged towards the equipment cabinet and fumbled inside, drawing out a sharp scalpel. “Where is it? Can you smell it?”

“The smell’s everywhere!”

“Can you  _ see _ it?”

“No. It’s like it vanished into…”

A shadow loomed up over the bed. Cat hissed and lashed out. Kryten yelped in fear and flung the scalpel. It flew uselessly through the shadow as if through mist. With no other options left, he dived in front of Cat. “Shoo! Get away! Leave him alone!”

His olfactory system was briefly overwhelmed by the pungent smell, before shutting down. He felt a strange sensation of sudden fatigue and his chest monitor sputtered, the light dying. His visual systems blurred and pixelated, but he briefly saw the distorted outline of a tall hunched figure in front of him, and a strange red glow where its eyes should be, before it collapsed in on itself and vanished. “Where did it go? Where did it go?” He reached out blindly.

Cat squinted into the darkness and saw a substance like black oil spilling under the doorway and out into the corridor. “It’s going. I think I scared it away by making myself look big.”

“Are you alright, Sir?”

“I’m better now that thing’s gone and taken its stench with it.”

Kryten felt a fizz in his circuit boards as his systems righted themselves. His chest light came back on and his visuals snapped back into sharp focus. “Ah, that’s better. My eyes are back online.” The overhead lights flickered back to life and the medi-computer rebooted with a whir. “ _ Everything’s _ back online.”

He and Cat looked at each other. “So what do we do now?” Cat asked grimly.

“We have to warn the others.” 

“You’re not leaving me on my own in here, buddy.”

“Do you think you can walk?”

“Not fast, but yeah.”

“Let me see.” Kryten picked up the scalpel from the floor and carefully cut away the bandages around Cat’s ankle. “It certainly looks a lot better.”

“I’m a Cat. We heal quickly.”

Kryten tentatively flexed the foot. “Is it painful?”

“Just sore. Let’s go.”

“Are you certain it’s not too...” Kryten hesitated, turning the ankle up towards the light. Now that the bruising and swelling had dissipated, he could see two puffy pinpricks on the outer edge, just above the bone. It did not look like a rat bite.

He crossed the room, went straight to the intercom, and picked up the microphone. “Mister Lister, Mister Rimmer,” he tried to keep his voice cheerful and calm. “There’s no need to panic, but if you’re awake and you can hear this message then please lock the door to your sleeping quarters, block off any gaps or vents, and try to find something to arm yourselves with immediately. Unfortunately, as previously feared, we do in fact appear to have some kind of mysterious, unspeakable, blood-chilling horror on board. The Cat and I are on our way to you now, don’t worry, we’ll explain everything when we get there. Be with you in just a jiffy!”

A few minutes later, down in the storage hold, a fat weevil was scuttling amongst the crates. One moment it was there, and then, in one inky flash of darkness, it was not. But something else was. Something that was slowly growing in strength, was hungry for more than weevils, and would not be denied again.

  
  
  



	10. Chapter 10

Lister pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders, trying to take deep calming breaths. He was still shaking. He’d woken up in the grip of utter terror, the lights in the corridor blinding him, and lashing out like a cornered animal. “Get away from me! Let me go! Let me go!”. His clawing hands had latched onto Rimmer’s pyjamas and they’d both ended up sprawled on the floor, Lister’s brain still trying to decide if he was awake or dreaming, and where the danger was. Rimmer had wrapped him in a bear hug to stop him thrashing, “It’s me, you idiot! It’s just me! You’re dreaming! It’s just a dream!” Eventually, once he’d calmed down, he’d helped him back to their room on trembling legs and dropped him onto the red vinyl couch, taking a seat next to him.

“Lister, I realise this is something of an inane question in the circumstances,” Rimmer paused uncomfortably, “but are you...okay?”

“I don’t know,” Lister replied hopelessly. “I think so. I just haven’t been sleeping well.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Rimmer replied crisply.

Lister returned his glare. “They say sleepwalking’s more common when you’re sleep-deprived. That’s probably all it is.”

“What’s been keeping you awake?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing we can actually do anything about.”

“Meaning?”

Lister sank back, cringing slightly. “It’s just bad dreams, okay?”

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

“About what?”

“I’m the last man alive and I’m trapped on a spaceship three million years from home. Take your pick.” Lister retorted.

Rimmer brushed the remark aside. “That’s nothing new though, is it? Is this about...you know, the last couple of days? The _Demeter_ and all the smeg it’s brought with it?”

“No. The nightmares started before we even set foot on the _Demeter_. None of it’s new,” Lister told him. “It’s all old, old stuff that shouldn’t matter anymore. I don’t know why it keeps coming back. Why it’s suddenly coming back _now_.”

“So it’s the same dream? Over and over?”

“Yeah,” Lister confirmed heavily. “Over and over and over.”

Rimmer waited expectantly. “Are you going to tell me?” he eventually asked.

Lister gave him a withering look, “Do you care?”

“You’re waking me up too with these shenanigans, you know.”

Lister sighed and looked up at the ceiling, clearly debating with himself. “Something happened to me,” he said finally, after a difficult pause. “A long long time ago. Before I even left Earth. Something horrible.”

“Worse than all of the smeg we’ve waded through since?”

“No, not really. I don’t know why my brain has suddenly started chewing on it, I hadn’t even thought about it in forever, but now it’s like…” Lister tried to think how to describe the invasive thoughts that had been plaguing him for days, “...like it’s with me all the time. I can’t shake it.”

“Soooo...?” Rimmer pressed impatiently.

Lister’s face contorted. “It’s hard to explain. Well, not that hard really. Someone - a friend - tried to kill me.”

Rimmer’s eyes widened. “That’s stretching the definition of a friend, Lister.”

“It was all very weird. I knew someone was watching me - stalking me, I suppose - for a while. There was this odd little bird from work. She liked me but she wouldn’t talk to me, she was super shy, and she would just kind of follow me around and I assumed…”. 

He was cut off by Kryten‘s voice coming through the tannoy. “Mister Lister, Mister Rimmer. There’s no need to panic, but-” 

They listened to the rest of the announcement with rapidly growing alarm. Forgetting the past for the moment, Lister scrambled off the couch and flew across the room to lock the door. Rimmer was already in meltdown. “Nothing on the scans, you said! You’re overreacting, you said!”

“Calm down. We don’t know yet exactly what happened.”

“You’re right,” Rimmer chirped sarcastically. “Maybe when he said ‘blood-chilling horror’ what he actually meant was ‘adorable fuzzy space-bears’. Maybe we’ve been invaded by _Ewoks!_ ” His voice rose in pitch with every syllable.

“They’re obviously both ok, so let’s not freak out just yet.” Lister grabbed a towel from the bathroom and wedged it under the door.

“What are we going to do? The closest thing we have to a weapon in here is your dirty laundry!”

“Use your imagination! Anything heavy, anything sharp, just put it within reach.”

Eventually they heard a knock at the door, and Kryten’s voice outside. “Sirs, it’s us! Let us in!”

“How do we know it’s really you out there?” Rimmer asked suspiciously.

“How do we know it’s really you in there?” Cat retaliated irritably.

Lister rolled his eyes, “Kryten, what’s your middle name?”

“2X4B. Ugh. Such a jerky middle name.”

“Okay,” he opened the door for them and they stumbled in, Cat limping only slightly. They’d stopped on the way to pick up three bazookoids.

“Hey, you’re walking better! That’s something at least.” Lister tried to be optimistic.

“Yes, _that’s_ the most important thing we need to discuss.” Rimmer waved his arms. “Close the door! Close the door!”

Lister hit the lock pad and the panel lit up red. “There you go. We’re safe.”

“Don’t count on it, buddy,” Cat said grimly, handing him a gun.

“What happened?” Rimmer demanded.

“I was tending to Mr Cat in the medibay when suddenly the power went out,” Kryten explained. “Thanks to his nasal expertise, he was able to detect the danger. The door was shut, but something got into the room with us.”

“What do you mean ‘something’?”

“It was dark, so we couldn’t make out much. Just a shadow.”

“A shadow? That’s it?” Lister raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

“With red eyes,” Kryten added. 

“Red eyes???” Rimmer peeped.

“It approached the bed, and I tried to scare it away by throwing a scalpel but it went right through it, as if it were entirely immaterial.”

“So I made myself look big and it ran away,” Cat boasted. “It turned into goo and went back under the door.”

“It affected my circuits too,” Kryten told them anxiously. “It didn’t knock me out entirely, but I think it might have with continued exposure.”

“Red eyes,” Rimmer repeated fearfully. “That’s what Harker said, remember? About the thing on the _Demeter_.”

“And 273 was right - clearly the creature has some effect, maybe even influence, over electricity.”

“The power went strange down here too,” Rimmer confirmed.

“Huh? When?” Lister asked.

“As you were walking down the corridor...the lights...the lights were going crazy.”

“What?”

“They were flickering as you passed, like you were giving off some freaky electro-magnetic charge or something.”

“I don’t remember.”

“You were still dreaming. But I saw it.”

“You’re sure? You’d only just woken up too.”

“I’m sure.” 

“What’s this?” Kryten asked, concerned.

“It’s nothing,” Lister squirmed. “I’ve been sleep-walking recently. Bad dreams, that’s all.”

“How long has it been going on for?”

“Before we found the _Demeter_. I don’t think it’s connected,” Lister said quickly.

“Wait a minute,” Rimmer frowned. “The bad dreams might have started sooner, but the sleep-walking is only since yesterday. You told me it had never happened before, right?”

“Yeah, but…”

“273 said whatever this thing is, it’s looking for you. Maybe it’s using your dreams as a way to lure you out.”

“That’s stupid. If it’s after me then why did it go for Cat and Kryten?”

“Because it already _tried_ to go after you, and I interfered. The lights went back to normal after I woke you up and we went back to the sleeping quarters. It went away.”

Lister felt all the fears he’d been trying to suppress for the past few days gathering, threatening to overwhelm him. “Okay,” he said, the tremor in his voice betraying his facade of calm. “So this thing is real. It’s onboard. It doesn’t show up on our scans. We can’t trace it. It can manipulate the power. It may even be able to manipulate me. As far as we know it can turn into anything and get in anywhere. It wiped out an entire research ship. And if 273 was right, which it seems it was about everything else, it’s hunting for me. So what do we do?”


	11. Chapter 11

The four of them sat around the table in the sleeping quarters, bazookoids within grabbing distance. “Are these things even going to be any use?” Rimmer asked nervously. “What’s the point of shooting a pile of goo?”

“It’s not a threat when it’s goo. If it tries being anything more solid,  _ that’s _ when we shoot it.” Lister cast another wary glance at the door.

“So we’re just going to sit here and wait for it to turn up?” Cat complained.

“No point us going looking for it. Out there, it could be anywhere or anything. At least if we stay put, we’ll see it coming.”

“I’ll smell it coming, that’s for sure.”

“And if it doesn’t come? How long do we wait?” Rimmer asked.

“As long as we need to. We’ve got everything we need in here for at least a few days. I don’t reckon it will wait that long; not now it’s shown itself. If it wants me, it’ll have to come and get me.”

Lister stifled a yawn. Rimmer stared at him in disbelief. He was still reeling from everything that had happened in the last hour - the sudden awakening, the ferocity of Lister’s nightmare and his equally alarming confession, and then the bombshell of Kryten’s announcement. “I’m sorry, are you  _ bored _ ?”

“No, I’m  _ tired _ , Smeghead. I haven’t slept properly for days.”

“You need to stay alert. We all do.”

“Perhaps we should take it in turns to keep watch,” Kryten suggested. “That way Mr Lister and Mr Cat can get some much-needed rest. Neither of them are operating at full capacity right now.”

“Good idea. And if I start wandering around again, you guys will be here to stop me going too far.” Lister stood up and headed back to his bunk.

“How can you sleep knowing there’s a monster roaming the corridors that wants to kill you?” Rimmer exclaimed, his voice shrill with anxiety.

“I’m used to it,” Lister replied dryly. “Seems like there’s always someone trying to kill me.” 

Rimmer’s lips pursed at the reminder of their earlier interrupted conversation. “You know, you never finished telling me about what happened back…”

Lister quickly cut him off. “It can wait. It’s not important right now, and I really need some sleep. Another time, okay?” 

He climbed back into his bunk and rolled over so he was facing the wall. Despite the brave front he was putting up for the others, inside he was in utter turmoil. 

_ -Tell them. Tell them. _

_ -How? _

_ -From the beginning. They don’t need to know all of it, but they need to know. _

_ -It can’t be connected. It’s not possible. There’s no way.  _

_ \- The photograph.  _ **_The photograph._ **

Lister clung to the duvet like it was his sanity, and tried to stay calm. It was probably a trick of the mind, a nasty Easter egg his nightmare had decided to taunt him with, and not a real memory at all. Like Harker, he understood all too well the power of suggestion; especially on a mind that was already strained. But he thought he might now understand his shockingly visceral reaction to the photograph he’d found on the  _ Demeter _ . 

He  _ had _ seen it before. Three million years ago. Pinned to the wall of a dark candlelit basement in Liverpool along with hundreds of other images of his face, moments before he’d nearly died.

_ He had to admit, just being here was making him feel better. The house was trendily decorated as a kind of minimalist Zen pad; all white walls and white furnishings with a bare wooden floor. The chrome ceiling fan above his head made a steady, soothing, beating sound against the warm air. It wasn’t really his style; he knew he was neither tidy nor disciplined enough to keep a place like this clean and uncluttered; but at the moment it was just what he needed to soothe his nerves. He closed his eyes and sipped at his hot, sweet tea. _

_ “Are you sure you’re okay?” _

_ “I’m fine. It was just a bit of a shock, y’know?” _

_ “I’m sure.” _

_ “I s’pose I’m going to have to confront her about it. I mean, I can’t just ignore it anymore, right? But she knows where I live, where I work, everything.” _

_ “Why don’t you just leave? It’s not like you want to be a trolley parker all your life.” _

_ “I don’t know. Maybe. But if she knows where I live, then quitting my job won’t stop her, will it?” _

_ “It might be a start. Go on! I dare you to call them up right now and quit! Tell them you’re not coming back.” _

_ “Tempting as that is, I still need to eat. Besides, my phone’s dead. Which is weird, because I thought it still had a decent charge when I left...” _

_ He leaned back into the sofa, tired suddenly. This was all too much to think about and he didn’t have the energy for it. He took another deep sip of his tea. Caffeine and sugar...that was what he needed right now.  _

_ “If you want, I can call the guys and say we won’t come down to the pub tonight. You know...if you don’t really feel up to it. We can just stay here.” He must look as tired as he felt. That was nice to know. _

_ “I’ll be okay after I’ve finished my tea. I’d rather not sit around thinking about it. Brooding won’t help. Thanks anyway.” _

_ “You sure? You look like you’re going to nod off.”  _

_ “No, no. I’m fine, really.” He half-heartedly drained his mug and forced a weak smile. It was true that now the adrenaline rush from his nasty discovery was ebbing away, chased by the calming decor and hot tea, he was starting to feel a little drained; but surely that was to be expected? He’d feel better in a few minutes. He just needed to rest. The room around him went black and crackled like static. _

_ “Dave!” He forced his eyes open. He didn’t remember closing them. “Just lie down for a little while and everything will be fine. You’ll feel better when you wake up.” There was another buzz of static, and he was lying across the sofa, the room at an angle. He sighed deeply, and thought he detected a faint smell in the air, something weird but oddly familiar. Flowers...dead flowers...just like the ones in his bedroom. And he suddenly felt the creeping chill of a terrible realisation come over him... _

“Lister.  _ Lister _ .” He opened his eyes. Rimmer was in front of him, shaking him by his shoulders. “Wake up. It’s happening again.”

“Hmm? Wha’?” He looked around. He was sitting bolt upright, one leg out of bed. Kryten was hovering anxiously by the bunk, Rimmer was still holding tight to him.

“You awake?”

“Yeah. Yeah, man. I’m awake.”

Rimmer finally let go. “You sat up in bed and you were just  _ staring _ at the door. You wouldn’t reply to us. I grabbed you when you started to get up.”

“Thanks. Cat?”

“Still asleep.” Kryten confirmed.

“He’s not shown any signs of going walkabout?”

“None at all.”

Lister flopped back down. “I’m so  _ tired _ , guys. I can’t go on like this.”

“We’ll keep an eye on you, Sir. Anytime you’re sleeping, at least two of us will keep watch.”

“It might stop me going anywhere. It won’t make me less tired.”

“We could tie you to the bed?” Rimmer suggested.

“Excuse me?”

“If you physically can’t get up, we don’t need to wake you.”

“Let’s leave that as a last resort, shall we?”

“Go back to bed, Sir. You need all the rest you can get.”

“Going to bed is easy,” Lister grumbled, curling up again. “It’s  _ staying _ there that’s tricky.”

Rimmer stepped away from the bunk, his stomach still churning uneasily. The expression on Lister’s face as he’d sat up, the intensity of that stare, had sent chills through him. Somehow it was more frightening than the bloodthirsty snarl he’d let out earlier. “What is  _ happening? _ ” he murmured to himself.


	12. Chapter 12

They spent most of the following day sitting around playing cards. Lister had managed to squeeze in a few more hours of uninterrupted sleep, but he still felt lousy. Cat at least seemed more or less back to normal, and Kryten showed them the fading bite marks on his ankle. “It looks almost like a snake bite,” Rimmer commented, pulling a disgusted face. Lister stared and said nothing.

Given the subdued atmosphere, they all jumped a mile when the ship’s warning system started blaring. “Please remain calm. The ship will shortly be experiencing some turbulence. All navigation crew should report to their workstations.”

“Now what?” Rimmer complained.

“There is an electrical storm in the vicinity, Sir. We must be passing closer to it than I anticipated.”

“Should we be worried?” Lister asked.

“It depends on the strength and proximity of the storm. It might do nothing but buffet us a bit, or it might cause some mild interference. So long as it doesn’t affect any vital systems, we should be fine. We have good surge protectors and should be able to withstand even a direct hit reasonably well.”

Lister bit his lip. “I hate to say it, but someone should really stay in the drive room to monitor the damage reports.”

“What happened to staying put?” Rimmer protested.

“If the storm knocks out something important then we need to know right away. If we don’t know the oxy-generation unit has been fried until we can’t breathe, then it’s a bit too late.”

“For  _ you _ .” Rimmer muttered.

“We can all go together if we need to.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Sir. Suggest I man the drive room, while the three of you remain here. 273 seemed confident that the creature was not a serious threat to droids.”

“Okay. And if any emergency repairs are needed anywhere, we can still go together as a group.”

The ship trembled around them; only a light disturbance, but an ominous forewarning of what was likely to come. Lister turned to Kryten, concern obvious in his face. “Try not to worry, Sir. I’ll be fine, and we’ll be through the storm in a matter of hours.”

“Just be careful, man, okay? Stay in contact as much as you can.”

“Will do, Sir.”

The remaining three went back to their game, the tension more pronounced than ever, and tried to ignore the increasingly regular - and increasingly intense - rumbles of the storm as it closed in on the ship. Lister visibly relaxed when Kryten’s voice came through the intercom. “In place now, Mr Lister. No damage reported so far, and no unpleasant visitors.”

“Good. Keep us updated.”

There was a loud boom that echoed around the ship, and everything juddered violently. They all leapt up, ready to run if necessary. The lights went out for a moment, but quickly returned. “Don’t worry!” Kryten called out. “That was a big one, but everything’s fine. No damage reported!”

“Man, this charge in the air is putting my teeth on edge,” Cat complained. “My hair’s standing on end! I gotta go fix it.” He disappeared into the bathroom.

“Well, that’s the last we’ll see of him for the next three hours,” Rimmer remarked sourly.

“So much for the game,” Lister sat down again and pushed the deck of cards aside.

“I have a question,” Rimmer piped up tersely. “If the storm is going to mess with the power like this, how do we know what’s being caused by the lightning and what might be our sinister snake-toothed friend heading this way?”

“Relax, Cat said he can smell it. He’ll warn us. Let’s just hope we get through this quickly without any damage.” Lister rubbed fretfully at the bridge of his nose. “I really don’t want to have to go wandering the corridors for repairs when the lights could go at any-” another boom shook the ship, and the lights went out, “-moment.”

Kryten’s voice came through the intercom. “Sirs, I’m switching the ship to emergency power only, to reduce the risk of any fuse blowouts causing a circuit failure.”

“Wait a minute. Does that mean-?” Rimmer’s image flickered and he reappeared in his iridescent soft-light uniform. “Smeg.” He sank back into his chair and put his head in his hands.

“It’s only temporary,” Lister said.

“I know, but still.” Rimmer folded his arms sulkily. “What am I supposed to do now? I can’t even play poker.” 

He gave Lister a baleful glance. “I suppose maybe now would be a good time to tell me the rest of your tragic backstory.”

“There’s really not much to tell,” Lister quickly dropped his gaze and started to gather up the abandoned cards.

“Spit it out then. Some silly bint with a crush on you took it badly when you gave her the brush off, yes?”

“No.” Lister thumbed through the deck, restless. There was a heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach, an almost physical resistance to sharing this. He still wasn’t sure he wanted to tell this story, or even if he should. 

“You said…”

“It wasn’t her,” he interjected quietly. “None of it was. I got the whole thing wrong. She wasn’t my stalker. She was just a shy harmless girl, too scared to ask me out. It was... someone else.”

“Who?”

Lister took a deep steadying breath. “Just a guy from the pub. One of the regular crowd. I didn’t even know him that well. The night it all happened, I got home from work and my flat had been broken into. There were...” he stopped suddenly and shook his head, skipping over whatever he’d been about to say. “I thought it was her. It freaked me out. I didn’t want to be there on my own. When I left the building, I bumped into him outside. He must have been waiting. He took me back to his place for a cuppa, to try and calm me down like.” He closed his eyes, as if trying to remember. Or trying not to. Rimmer heard his breathing change, could see the grip of anxiety taking hold as he went over it again in his head; and felt himself starting to tense up too in response. “He drugged me,” Lister said, without opening his eyes. “He drugged the tea. And when I woke up, all groggy and screwy...he attacked me.” The ship juddered again as lightning flashed outside. With the lights now dimmed, the ferocity of the storm was even more palpable. “I managed to fight him off. I still don’t know how I did it. And I managed to get out of the house. The neighbours came running. I was a mess; I could hardly walk, my clothes were ripped and covered in blood...”

“Blood?” Rimmer paled even at the word.

“From the fight,” Lister said with a vague shrug. “The police came, but he’d done a runner. And...that was that.”

“Why’d he do it?” Rimmer asked, bewildered.

“He was a nutter.”

“You must have done  _ something _ .”

Lister shuffled awkwardly. “Like I said, it was all very weird. The police thought he’d planned it as a murder-suicide.”

“Why?”

“They found stuff in the house...down in the cellar. I don’t know. I was so out of it, I don’t really remember.”

“So what happened to him?”

“Nothing, as far as I know.” Lister tapped the cards on the table, squaring off the deck, seeming calmer again. “He vanished. The police gave me an emergency number to call if I had any more trouble, but a few months later I wound up on Mimas anyway.”

“Do you think he ever did come looking for you? After you’d left?” 

Lister avoided his gaze, “I dunno, man.” His voice was strangely tense.

“You must have wondered.”

“I didn’t want to think about it. I couldn’t spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. If he did come back to Liverpool to finish me off, I was gone. Simple as that.”

“I can’t believe you’ve never told me about this before,” Rimmer said, somewhat accusingly.

“Why would I? It’s not exactly a funny story, is it? How do you even bring something like that up in conversation? ‘Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I was nearly murdered?’. It’s not the kind of thing you share over a drink with your mates.”

“No, but I would have thought you might have at least mentioned it.”

“We’ve had enough other stuff to deal with over the years. Like you said yesterday, when you put it in perspective, it’s no worse than some of the other smeg we’ve been through. It was scary, but at the end of the day he was just some guy and I wasn’t really hurt. It’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal.” Rimmer repeated, and squinted at him patronisingly, “Lister, have you considered that the recurring nightmares you’re having might just possibly be a sign of some unresolved PTSD with regards to the aforementioned experience?”

“Don’t be daft. I keep telling you, I’ve been through worse. I’ve probably had more near-death experiences than fresh veggies over the years.”

“Everything about that sentence is horrifying.”

“Look, I’m not saying it wasn’t awful,” Lister said heavily, as the lightning played over his face, “but I’m over it. It was all a very long time ago.”

“Lister, I still have nightmares about my old PE teacher. Some things leave a scar. There’s no shame in admitting that.” 

“We all have nightmares,” Lister replied stoically. “You still have dreams where you’re back at IO House with the word ‘Bonehead’ chalked on your back. I’m sure in his downtime Kryten still sees those skeletons back on the Nova 5. And Cat...well, remember that time he caught his purple silk smoking jacket on a loose nail?” Rimmer smirked despite himself. “We all have stuff in our past that we’d rather forget, yeah? The trick is not to let it interfere with the present.”

“Okay. Maybe a good way to do that is to actually have some therapy with the medi-bot and see if that helps with the nightmares.”

“Maybe. If this thing doesn’t kill me first.” He side-eyed Rimmer. “Don’t tell the others.”

“About the therapy thing or the nearly-murdered thing?”

“Any of it.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re all already twitchy and nervous, and because I don’t want to talk about it any more than I have to, okay?”

“Okay, okay. Suit yourself.”

He didn’t press it any further, but when Rimmer thought about the way Lister had snarled as he’d woken him in the corridor; the almost feral response of fear and panic the nightmare had unleashed, he was not convinced that Lister was as unaffected by the whole experience as he claimed. He didn’t think Lister was over what had happened at all. 


	13. Chapter 13

Lister was grateful for the interruption when Cat emerged from the bathroom. “Hey, who turned out the lights?”

“It’s just a precaution.”

“I can’t see my reflection properly!”

“How tragic.” Rimmer rolled his eyes.

“Sure, act like I’m the vain one. You changed your whole outfit while I was fixing my hair. What, you wanted something to reflect the lightning better?”

Rimmer bristled. “ _ I _ didn’t change my clothes, you self-obsessed oaf. The ship’s on emergency power. I’ve been downgraded to soft-light.”

“So you’re all ghostified again?”

“If you mean incorporeal, then yes.” Rimmer glared at him.

“I like my word better.”

“Only because you don’t understand anything more scientific. And it’s insensitive to remind me of my...condition.”

“You should be thankful,” Cat snarked. “Out of the three of us, you’re the only one the freaky shadow-monster can’t eat.”

“Yes, being dead already is such a  _ privilege _ .”

“Guys…” Lister warned softly. His head was pounding with exhaustion and stress, the conversation he’d just had with Rimmer had drained him further, and all he wanted was to crawl back into his bunk and sleep until all of this was over.

“You’d better be alert, that’s all I’m saying,” Rimmer continued peevishly. “If we can’t rely on the lights warning us when this thing gets close, then your nostrils are the only warning we’ve got. And I can’t use the bazookoids like this.”

“Like you’d be any help. You’re a lousy shot. Besides, the moment that thing appears, you’ll be a dot in the distance. You always scoot when things get hairy. ”

“That is not true! Let me tell you, the number of situations I’ve been in that you know nothing about, where I’ve had to...”

Lister was no longer listening. The sound of their squabbling had faded into the background, along with the sound of the engines, even the storm, as his mind drifted. It felt as though a strange silver veil had fallen over his head, like he was viewing everything through a fine gauzy membrane. It was...strangely calming. And then he felt it.

_Come to me._ He sensed the command in his core. _Come to me now._

Slowly, he stood up. Cat and Rimmer didn’t even notice. They didn’t notice anything until they heard the sound of the door whirring open, and both spun around to see Lister walking out into the dark hallway. “Lister! What the hell are you doing?” Rimmer bolted after him.

“Is Goalpost-Head really so annoying you’d rather take your chances with the shadow-monster?!” Cat exclaimed.

Lister didn’t reply. Their voices felt far away and insignificant. Only one thing mattered; the summons deep inside him that could not be defied.

“It must be the somnambulism again,” Rimmer said dismayed, walking alongside him helplessly.

“The what?”

“Sleep-walking! Sleep-walking, you imbecile! You’ll have to wake him up.”

“But he was awake two seconds ago!”

“Just do it!”

Cat reached for Lister’s shoulder. “Hey bud, snap out of it. You need to come back in-” The second he touched Lister, he was thrown back violently, as if from an electric shock. 

Rimmer watched aghast as he fell to the ground. “Cat? Cat!” He dropped beside him. He was unconscious but still breathing. He looked back and forth desperately between his two crew-mates; Cat unresponsive on the ground, and Lister gradually disappearing down the hallway. He raced back to the sleeping quarters and the intercom. 

“Kryten! Kryten! Answer me, you useless metal bastard!”

“What’s wrong, Sir?”

“Everything! Something’s wrong with Lister! He’s sleep-walking again and I can’t stop him!”

“Where’s the Cat?”

“Out of action. He put a hand on Lister and it was like he’d touched an electric fence. I think he’s okay, but he’s out for the count, and Lister’s walking around out there on his own like a zombie! What do I do? What do I do?!”

“Oh, sizzle my circuits! Let me think…”

“Just get down here! We need your help!”

“Follow Mr Lister. Try and keep him safe. I’ll check on the Cat and join you once I know he’s not badly hurt.”

“I can’t keep Lister safe if I can’t touch anything! Switch the power back on!”

“The storm-”

“We’ll have to take our chances! Remember what 273 said; we can’t let that thing find him!”

Lister was not sleep-walking. He was awake, and still semi-aware of where he was and what he was doing. But something strange was happening to him. He had no control. It felt as though something had reached inside him, curled spectral claws around his ribcage and was using it to drag him closer, and he was helpless. He couldn’t fight it, didn’t even know how to, and trying would probably tear him to pieces.

The strange ephemeral film between him and reality remained. The world had split, and his mind with it, as though he were looking through multiple panes of glass, or through dark water. He could see his surroundings - the ship, the corridors, his own hand calling the lift- but beyond that, through the glass, beneath the water, he could see a different reality. His past, tinted a ghostly silver, playing out before him. He was following his own footsteps, as he once again found himself inside the dreams that had been disturbing him. He was walking the corridors of  _ Red Dwarf, _ he was walking the streets of Toxteth. He was standing in the lift, he was standing in the bedroom doorway of his flat and his bed was full of dead flowers. And in both places, here and there, he could feel the fear inside him rising. Something wanted him and there was no way to escape the inexorable pull, or avoid the confrontation he knew was coming both then and now; and the thought of what he was being dragged towards, in both places, made his knees tremble with terror. 

Rimmer flipped back to hard-light in mid-stride as he ran down the corridor in the same direction Lister had gone. The lights came back on as he skidded to a stop at the T-junction. He looked back and forth frantically, but there was no sign of him. “Smeg!” He was debating which way to try, when he heard the chime of the nearby lift. He flew down there as fast as he could, but it was too late. The doors were closed and the elevator was climbing. “No! No! God-smegging-dammit!” He pounded uselessly at the call button before accepting it was not going to come back. Instead he watched the counter like a hawk, waiting to see where it stopped. “Where the hell is he going?”

Could a sleep-walking person even  _ use _ a lift? Did Lister know what he was doing, what was happening? He’d seemed oblivious to their presence, and to what had happened to Cat. Rimmer’s hands curled into fists without him realising it, as he watched the display tick. Inside the lift, Lister was probably safe. But once it reached its destination, he was isolated, unarmed, and possibly even unaware of any danger. And with every floor the lift climbed, the longer it was going to take for Rimmer to reach him.

  
  
  
  



	14. Chapter 14

The lift doors opened and Lister stepped out into the deserted expanse of the botanical gardens. As he emerged, the lights sputtered and went out one by one, leaving the path ahead lit only by the faint starlight coming through the glass dome above and the frequent flashes of lightning outside the ship. He walked on, the trees and bushes casting eerie contorted shadows. A feeling of sickening dread was engulfing him, growing stronger with every step, as he edged closer to whatever terrible magnet was drawing him in. He wanted nothing more than to turn and run back to the safety of the sleeping quarters but, just like in his dreams, his mind was screaming inside a body that would not listen. He made his way deeper into the gardens and at the same time, in that other place, he was also feeling his way blindly along the hallway of the house, teetering at the top of the cellar stairs, descending once more into hell. It was close now. Very close.

“Come on! Come on!” Rimmer raged helplessly as the lift display edged its way slowly upwards. He realised in a flash of sudden dismay that in his rush to catch up with Lister, he had failed to retrieve one of the bazookoids from the sleeping quarters. He just had to hope and pray that either he would reach him first, or that the thing which had lured him away was still too weak to manifest as anything more threatening than smoke and goo. But that in itself raised its own problems; how did you fight a ghost?

Lister stepped off the path and drifted into a small grassy area shielded from view by tall rhododendron bushes dripping with huge blood-red flowers. It was the sort of secluded corner where lovers would have hidden away in the old days before the accident, when there were precious few places outside of a bunk room to escape the eyes of a thousand crewmates, or indeed to feel grass against your skin. But right now, the ring of twisting branches surrounding him felt like a cage, enclosing him like the walls of the cellar where his younger self was standing in that other reality. Something moved in the shadows under the bushes and the blooms started to shrivel, withering in front of his eyes. The smell of them filled the air, the scent of dead flowers fusing both realities - past and present - in his brain. Terror clogged his throat.

The leaves rustled, and a long hairy sinewy arm reached out from the shadows beneath the bower, as something crawled its way out. Lister stood paralysed as it emerged, every cell of his body desperate to run, and utterly unable to do so. The thing stood up, unfolding until it was towering above him. He was standing frozen in the darkness, face to face with the monster the crew of the  _ Demeter _ had seen as they met their doom: he was swaying on his feet in a candlelit cellar in Liverpool as a blurry figure stalked towards him. The lightning flashed above, glittering in his dark eyes as they stretched wide with fear. For a fraction of a second, as it flickered over the face of the beast, he saw another face; beneath the glass, beneath the water. A face he recognised. Even in the depths of his trance, he managed to breathe out one word. “ _ No… _ ”

_ Come to me. _ The red eyes bore into his and he stepped forward unwillingly, almost numb with terror. He felt its arms close around him, felt its coarse hair and the bones beneath its thin papery skin, and the awful inhuman strength in those scrawny limbs. The sickening smell of it invaded his senses as it pressed him close, pulling him snugly against its massive chest in a terrible embrace. He could feel the protruding bones of its ribcage digging into him. It peeled off his leather jacket and dropped it to the ground, unwrapping him like a piece of ripe fruit as he trembled in its grasp. It tilted his face up and fingernails like claws trailed almost lovingly across his throat, and then tore through the thin cloth of his shirt, pulling it back from his shoulders. He felt its hot breath on his bare skin as it snarled suddenly, a growl that rumbled through the thing’s entire body, and it flung him away.

The world tilted. He was on his hands and knees in the grass, his head spinning. He was crawling along the bare concrete floor of the cellar, terrified and disorientated. The beast pounced on top of him, still growling deeply, and a stabbing pain in his shoulder made him cry out. 

_ Mine _ . He felt the proclamation more than heard it as the creature claimed him, like a fist tightening around his heart. He wanted to fight, to struggle, but he couldn’t. Even without its powerful hold or the agonising grip of its teeth deep in his shoulder, he was helpless; forced to kneel in docile subservience as it fed on him.

His vision swam. He couldn’t catch his breath. When it finally let him drop, he slumped down weakly in the grass. The beast rolled him onto his back and its face loomed above him. Down in the cellar, a different face was looming over him. Maybe it was his own blurring vision, but the faces seemed to be shifting as they came closer - merging even - apart from the steady unyielding glow of those red eyes. 

_ It is time. _

He gasped for air, aching to scream, but nothing would come out. He squirmed helplessly, trying to get away from the thing, from  _ him _ , but it was no use. It bore down on him relentlessly.  _ You cannot escape me. You are mine.  _ It pinned him to the ground with its weight. He felt the feverish heat of its huge body on his and an uncontrollable erection started rising to life, hot and insistent between his legs. In the candlelit cellar, a hand touched his face, a finger traced his lips. A wave of conflicting emotions crashed through him. Everything seemed unreal. He was here, he was there. He was terrified and electrified, strung taut between horror and arousal as it leaned in closer, its teeth nearing his throat. He wanted to run for his life. He wanted this thing to devour him.  __ His brain knew it was grotesque, but his body was no longer his own. His back arched, offering himself up, even as his mind threatened to snap in resistance to what was happening.

The beast drew away from his throat to move lower. He trembled beneath it, screwing his eyes shut. He felt it take his unresisting hand in its claw, turning it over to raise the inside of his wrist to its mouth. It pressed red wet lips to his skin, in what felt almost like a kiss. His brain spasmed with black static, a feeling of deja-vu that was not quite a memory, and his eyes flew wide open. “No!” he finally found his voice, but too late. Fangs stabbed through his skin and he screamed.

_ Mine. _


	15. Chapter 15

Rimmer burst out of the lift doors and flew down the path, calling Lister’s name. A fork of lightning exploded angrily above the dome, bringing every shadow to life. He looked around desperately, searching for any kind of clue to which way he’d gone. Suddenly he heard a cry, almost muffled by the noise of the storm, and ran towards it. The sounds of distress became more intense as he drew closer, and his simulated heartbeat raced in terror. “Lister! Where are you? Where are you?”  _ Don’t let it be too late. Please, please, don’t let it be too late. _

He skidded to a halt as he heard Lister’s voice on the other side of a clump of dense bushes - “No!” - and then a scream that made his hair stand on end. Switching to soft-light, he dove straight through the hedge; and froze as the lightning lit up a scene that was the stuff of nightmares. 

Lister was splayed on the ground with the thing, the  _ beast _ , hunched over him. It had his arm in its grasp and was gnawing at the inside of his wrist like a dog with a bone as he writhed in pain. It was exactly as Harker had described, like an oversized wolf that had learned to walk like a person, its limbs too long for its body, and a short ugly bat-like snout full of sharp teeth. It looked up and saw him, its red eyes gleaming, and dropped Lister’s arm. Rimmer gulped, terror falling into his stomach like giant ice cubes into an already fizzing mass of fear as they locked eyes. It snarled at him furiously. Every instinct Rimmer had ever possessed in life was telling him to turn and run; but the sight of Lister on the ground held him in place. The lightning flashed again, and the beast crawled forward on all fours, straddling Lister posessively, as if sensing his thoughts. Its blood-filled mouth stretched wide. “Miiiiiine,” it snarled. Lister made a sound like a sob beneath it. And Rimmer, with no idea what he was doing or what he hoped to achieve, let out a kamikaze scream and hurtled towards the thing.

Still in soft-light, he fell through it harmlessly, but the reaction was immediate. It reared up with a howl and burst into black smoke that streamed away and disappeared. Rimmer stared in shocked disbelief. “Oh!” he panted, “I did it!”

He quickly turned his attention to Lister, who was struggling to get up. He automatically stooped down to try and help, but his hands went through him, and he fell back to the ground. “Ow!”

“Smeg, sorry, sorry. Um, hang on.” He switched himself back to hard-light and hauled Lister up. He swayed unsteadily in his arms, and now he was upright Rimmer could see the rips in his shirt, the blood soaking his arm and shoulder. “Oh my god.” He fought down the urge to vomit. 

“Is he gone?  _ Is he gone? _ ” Lister hung on to him, his eyes huge, his whole body trembling. He could barely stay standing.

“Yes, it’s gone. Let’s get out of here before it comes back.” 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Lister’s voice was hitching, he was breathless, hyperventilating. Rimmer had never heard him sound so distraught.

“Why? What for?” 

“I should have told you all...from the beginning.”

“Told us what?”

“Part of me knew...deep down...even before the photograph. When I opened the door and smelt the dead flowers. But I didn’t think it was possible. I didn’t want it to be true. It’s him,” Lister went on, quaking from head to toe as he clung to Rimmer’s shoulders. “It’s  _ him _ .”

“Who?”

“The one who endures. It’s Edward. He’s endured all this time, and he found me. He finally found me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rimmer said impatiently, “but we need to get you to the medibay. Come on.”

“No,” Lister shook his head desperately. “No, no, he’ll find me there, just like he found Cat.”

“Cat is probably right back there as we speak.”

“Did he get him too?”

“Let’s not get into that right now. Lister, we  _ have _ to  _ move _ .”

Lister took barely a step, and started to keel over. “I can’t...I can’t…” He swooned backwards, passing out cold in Rimmer’s arms.

“Smeg. Smeggity smeg smeg smeg. Fine. Okay.” Rimmer scooped him up. “I’ll just carry you. Whatever. Looks like I’m doing the hero thing again today anyway. Why not?”

Looking around anxiously, he hurried back towards the lift. The lights came back on as they approached, easing his fears slightly. It seemed the thing really had gone, but where, and for how long?

As he’d suspected, Kryten and Cat were already waiting in the medibay. Cat was sitting up, sipping a glass of water, and seemed fine. They both darted over when Rimmer entered, still carrying Lister. “What happened?” Kryten squealed in dismay. Rimmer barged past him, and lay Lister down on the bed that Cat had just vacated. “Monster,” he said shortly. “What do you think?”

“Damn,” Cat pulled a face, “the stink of that thing is all over him.”

“I’m a little more concerned about the  _ blood _ all over him,” Rimmer snapped.

“Let’s get him cleaned up, then we can see how bad it is.” Kryten grabbed some antiseptic wipes and started to carefully daub away the smears of blood running down Lister’s arm from his mangled wrist. Rimmer grabbed a handful as well, and started to reluctantly clean up his shoulder, trying not to look.  __ “Are you okay?” he asked Cat grudgingly, in an attempt to distract himself.

“I think so. Feels like something whacked me round the head.”

“He was already awake when I reached him,” Kryten explained. “I insisted on some tests, but we were just about to come and look for you both when you arrived.”

“What happened after Gerbil-Face zapped me?”

“I asked Kryten to turn the power back on so I could deal with Lister, but I lost him. He took the lift up to the botanical gardens. I had to wait for the next one. By the time I got there, he was on the ground with that  _ thing _ trying to eat him.”

“The shadow-monster?”

“It’s not just a shadow anymore. I saw what Harker saw, what they all saw on the  _ Demeter _ . The beast. The wolf-thing.”

“What did you do?” Cat’s mouth gaped in shock, his eyebrows vaulting upwards.

“I...don’t really know,” Rimmer admitted. “I ran at it, and it turned to smoke and vanished.”

“So it’s still out there?”

“Somewhere.”

“Great. And you left the guns down in your room.”

“I don’t think the bazookoids are going to help us,” Rimmer replied grimly, remembering how the creature had disintegrated.

Lister started to come around as Kryten was bandaging his wrist. “Where am I?” He looked around fearfully. 

“Don’t panic, Sir. You’ve been injured, but you’re going to be just fine. No need to worry. Everything’s just peachy.”

“Well…” Rimmer protested.

“I wouldn’t say…” Cat started to join in. Kryten silenced them both with a glare.

“I couldn’t help it,” Lister croaked. ”I had no choice. I couldn’t stop myself.”

“It’s okay, you’re safe now.”

“I’m not safe anywhere. He’ll be back for me. You don’t understand, none of you understand, he won’t stop.” Lister’s eyes glazed over, his already pale face losing what little colour it had as he started to retch. Rimmer quickly helped him to sit up, and Kryten just managed to grab a disposable bowl for him to vomit into. Increasingly concerned, he swiftly attached a few medi-sensors to Lister’s cold fingertips. “He must have lost more blood than we realised. His BP is on the floor. I’ll have to get some blood supplies out of stasis for a transfusion.”

“Is he going to be okay?” Cat asked nervously.

“The sooner we can do the transfusion the better.” Kryten waddled over to the walk-in storage unit and opened up the double doors of the preservation cabinet. He unlocked one of the silver cylinders and slid it out with a hiss, breaking the stasis seal, and unscrewed the cap. A polythene drip bag full of blood slid out into his hand. Rimmer quickly focused his gaze elsewhere. “I am really not good with this stuff,” he said shakily, already feeling queasy.

“Try and hold it together, Sir. I may need your assistance.”

Rimmer helped ease Lister back down onto the bed. “Try and lie still. Save your strength.” He turned his attention back to the wound on his shoulder; where two deep puncture marks, already ringed with black bruising, were still weeping blood. His stomach turned, and he quickly pressed a gauze pad to the area and taped it down. “Those teeth have got a lot smegging bigger since that thing bit Cat,” he remarked under his breath.

“So we need to find a plan to take it down before it comes looking for another snack,” Cat growled.

“He’ll kill you all.” Rimmer looked down in surprise. Lister was looking up at him, pale and weak, and only half-conscious. “He’ll kill you all to get to me.”

“Hey,” Cat said nervously. “We got this, buddy. We’re the Red Dwarf posse. We’ve taken down bigger and better bad guys than this.”

“He’ll be stronger than ever now. He won’t wait for long. He’s already waited over three million years.”

“What are you talking about?” Rimmer asked anxiously.

“I got away once, he won’t let me escape again. There’s nowhere left to run.”

“Is this about...what you told me earlier?” Rimmer asked cautiously. “They’re just dreams, Lister. Like you said, that was all a long time ago.”

“They weren’t dreams,” Lister said, his voice fading by the second. “They never were.”

His head lolled and his eyes fluttered closed as he lost consciousness. His lips were tinged with blue. His breathing was laboured. Rimmer gulped. “Hurry, Kryten.”

Kryten gathered up the rest of the equipment and brought it over to the bed. He set up the drip and then gently took Lister’s arm. “Can you roll his sleeve up to the elbow for me, and hold his arm steady while I find the vein?”

“Okay, okay, but I’m not looking.” Rimmer screwed his face up. “Urrrgh, I am  _ so very  _ not good with this stuff.”

When he risked opening one eye again, there was a needle taped snugly to the inside of Lister's arm. “All done,” Kryten said calmly. “He’ll be feeling better in no time.”

“Unless that thing comes back,” Cat pointed out. “We know it can get in here, even with the door locked.”

“So we stay here with him. All of us.” Rimmer said firmly. “So far it’s avoided confrontation wherever possible. It’s been trying to get Listy on his own. I say we make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  
  



	16. Chapter 16

While Lister rested, the other three gathered in a huddle across the room. “I don’t understand. Mr Lister thinks the monster is someone he knows?” Kryten looked perplexed.

“He’s just woozy and confused,” Rimmer said dismissively. “You know he mentioned earlier about the nightmares he’s been having? It’s all tied in with that, I think.”

“Nightmares about what?” Cat asked.

Rimmer glanced over at Lister on the medi-bed. He  _ had _ promised not to say anything. He tried to be vague. “Just a bad experience years ago. Something triggered the memory and it’s been playing on his mind.”

“You don’t think it’s related to any of this?”

“I don’t see how it can be. It’s all just got mixed up in his head.”

“Are you sure? If there’s a connection then it might help us determine what this thing is and what it wants.”

“And how to get rid of it,” Cat added.

The floor beneath them wobbled as another tremor rocked the ship. “How much longer is this going to go on for?” Rimmer asked irritably, quickly using the distraction to change the subject.

“A while yet, I’m afraid.”

“As if things aren’t bad enough.”

“I understand your desire for safety in numbers, Sir, but now Mr Lister is stable I do think it might be wise for me to return to the drive room.”

“Are you serious?”

“The storm may prove just as dangerous as our fanged friend if not monitored properly. It’s a real disadvantage that we don’t have Holly these days to keep an eye on things.”

“Fine. You and me on guard then,” he turned to Cat.

“I’ll help keep an eye on Dormouse Cheeks, but I’m getting the bazookoids back first.”

“You can’t go on your own.”

“Sure I can. I’ve got an advantage, I can smell the thing coming.”

“So you’re leaving me on my own to protect Lister?”

“Hey, you saw the freakshow off once, I’m sure you can do it again. Right?”

“I don’t know what I did last time, and I sure as hell don’t smegging know if it will work again!”

“Relax, I’ll be back before you know it and I’ll be packing the firepower.”

“We don’t even know what use the bazookoids will be against this thing!”

“I don’t know about you, buddy, but I’d like the option to find out.”

“Whatever,” Rimmer threw up his hands. “Just don’t be long. And Kryten, you stay in touch and get back here pronto if anything changes. Understood?”

“I’ll be here like a shot, Sir. Keep an eye on the medi-computer and keep me updated.”

Rimmer locked the door behind them and took a seat next to Lister. His eyelids fluttered and Rimmer immediately tensed. What was he going to do if Lister started sleep-walking again? Could he restrain him by himself? After seeing what had happened to Cat, he was reluctant to try. He had no idea how a similar shock would affect his light bee.

Lister’s eyes flickered open. Rimmer held his breath, but Lister appeared to be genuinely awake. His frightened eyes found Rimmer’s. “You have to get out of here,” he whispered.

“I’m not going anywhere; and neither are you any time soon, Squire. That thing drained you the way you drain beer milkshakes. We can’t even think about moving you until the transfusion is done.”

“We don’t have that long. He wants to finish this. He wants to finish what we started.”

“In the garden?”

“In Liverpool.”

“Finish what exactly?”

“I don’t know.”

Rimmer tried to reason with him, “Listen, I don’t know what that thing is, or why it’s after you,” he said, trying to stay calm and restore some sanity to the situation, “but it’s not who you think it is. Okay? It’s not. It’s just not possible.”

“I thought so too. Until I remembered where I’d seen that photograph before.”

“Photograph? What photograph?”

“Of  _ me _ , Smeghead.” Lister was getting visibly weaker with the effort of talking. He closed his eyes. “On the  _ Demeter _ . He kept it. All this time. Waiting. Searching. 273 was right.”

Rimmer felt a nasty sense of foreboding creeping over him. He wasn’t sure how much of this was the delirium talking. For Lister, the line between dreams and reality had been blurring for days. Rimmer thought it was safe to assume the creature was behind that somehow; exploiting the metaphorical weak spot it had found in Lister’s psyche. But he also remembered 273’s frenzied insistence that the beast’s hunt for Lister was somehow personal. 

“That’s crazy. It’s  _ ridiculous _ . You’re telling me that thing we saw had a photo album? What else? A scrapbook? A mood board?”

“He wasn’t always like this,” Lister murmured, eyes still closed. “You never saw him...back then. I saw his face. I saw his face in the lightning. He was never what...he...seemed…”

Lister’s voice tailed off. Rimmer quickly checked his obs, but everything was stable. He was just exhausted. For now at least, he appeared to be sleeping peacefully, but his skin was still mildly cyanosed, and the dark hollows beneath his eyes were noticeable. Rimmer wondered if they should have started him on antibiotics right away. In his current weakened condition, an infection could be lethal.  _ Seems like someone’s always trying to kill me. _

A feeling of unease prickled at Rimmer’s brain as he thought back over the events of the last couple of days. Although he’d dismissed Lister’s fearful rantings as the result of shock and confusion, could there be more to it? Lister had described the would-be murderer from his youth as ‘just some guy’ and had apparently escaped the altercation with relative ease, and the whole thing had taken place in a time and place so distant it might as well have been a different life, a different universe. So why was Lister’s mind apparently making the link to his current predicament? What was the connection?

Was the photo Lister had spoken of real, or was it part of the delusion? Was it the memory of that unfinished business, that lingering threat from his past life, that had triggered Lister’s apparent PTSD? He claimed the nightmares had started before they even found the  _ Demeter _ . And then there was the way the creature seemed to be using those nightmares - those memories - as a means of manipulation, maybe even mind control. Almost as if it  _ knew _ .

_ -Do you think he ever did come looking for you? After you’d left? _

_ -He’s endured all this time, and he found me. He finally found me. _

Rimmer gazed down at Lister’s sleeping face. His lips pursed purposefully. If he was going to have any hope of understanding what was happening now, he needed to know exactly what had happened that night in Liverpool all those years ago. He needed to know what he had found on the  _ Demeter _ . 

He needed to see his memories.


	17. Chapter 17

Rimmer gently slipped off Lister’s rings, and the chain around his neck, and placed them on the side table, pushing aside Cat’s water glass and the scalpel Kryten had discarded earlier. He’d given Lister a very mild sedative, just to ensure he stayed asleep during the process. He needed the rest anyway. Careful not to pull out the drip, he wheeled the bed into the mind scanner and switched it on. He cringed as it powered noisily to life, but Lister didn’t stir.

Rimmer glanced guiltily towards the door before pulling on the headset. There were so many reasons he shouldn’t be doing this. He was invading Lister’s privacy; he was lowering his guard against the beast if it returned; Cat was due back any moment. This was a bad idea. But for now the two of them were alone in the medibay, the machine was right here, and it might be the only chance he’d get. He ported into Lister’s mind.

At first everything was black. Out of the darkness, a cheery voice piped up. “Hello! Welcome to MindMap! Where would you like to go today?”  
“Um...I’m not entirely sure.”  
“You can use the search function to help you find what you’re looking for!”  
“Really? Ok. Erm...Look for _Demeter_.”  
“Fetching those results now. Would you like to watch the full playback of memories relating to this search or just highlights?”  
“Highlights. I don’t have long.”  
“You can switch to watching a specific memory in full at any time during playback. Just say ‘details’.”  
“Yes, yes, fine. Just get on with it.”

There was a sudden burst of swirling coloured pixels as Lister’s memories loaded. The pixels started to reassemble and then suddenly, in the space of one breath...he was Lister. He was sitting in the Drive Room, talking to Kryten.

“ _The Demeter. 23rd century research vessel. Researching what, I wonder?”  
“Any number of things, I imagine…”_

“Fast forward!” A montage flitted past; boarding the ship, assessing the drive room, exploring the labs, discovering 273, and then a dark room - “Details!”

 _He prised open the door and a strong odour poured out, as thick and tangible as the heatwave from opening a hot oven. He gagged, hiding his mouth and nose in the crook of his arm. “What the smeg?” It was a dank musty smell, like an abandoned junk shop, or old damp dusty books. But it was mixed with something earthier, more organic, like rotting leaves at the end of a wet winter, or sludgy compost. Or dead flowers. He stepped inside nervously, fully expecting to find something disgusting, but the room was empty. It had obviously been someone’s quarters, there were a few basic personal artefacts scattered around, but nothing that should have made a stench like that. He was about to turn and go when something caught his eye. A photograph propped on the dresser. He walked towards it slowly. His hand, when he reached down to pick it up, was shaking. The photograph was of him. It had been torn in half, but the half that remained showed him sitting on a pub bench in the beer garden of the Aigburth Arms. He didn’t remember the occasion, and didn’t remember ever seeing this picture before. But for some reason, he was suddenly filled with a hot wave of dread…_ “Pause.”

Rimmer focused on the image of the young perky Lister. It was a nice picture. And concerningly, it seemed real. This was a genuine memory, not a dream or hallucination. But what did that mean? And why hadn’t Lister told them at the time? It didn’t make sense.

“I need to make a new search. Can you search for ‘near-death experience’?”  
“That search has returned three hundred and seventy-six results.”  
“Seriously??? That many?” Their lives really were messed up. No wonder his T-count was so damn high.  
“Would you like to refine your search?”  
“Try ‘near-death experience Liverpool’.”  
“That search has returned forty-two results.”  
“Oh, for crying out loud. How many bar-room brawls did the little smegger get into back then?” 

Rimmer thought hard; tore through the soggy wrapping of his memory to try and reach the shimmering nugget of information he knew was lurking within. What was it Lister had said? There had been a name in there, somewhere amidst the blood and hysterics, there had been a name. What was it?   
“Forget it. ‘Edward’. Search for ‘Edward’.”  
“That search has returned four results.”  
“That’s more like it. Let me see.”

Everything went black, and then the images of four faces sprung out of the darkness; frozen snapshots of Lister’s memories. A small boy, a scruffy teen, a gangly youth in sham glam attire, and an unremarkable man in his mid to late twenties. Rimmer assumed the first two were classmates from Lister’s childhood. The third was no doubt one of the ever-changing line-up of Smeg and The Heads. That left just one. “Show me number four.”

The programme zoomed in on the image of the final Edward, and then... _he was standing in the bar area of a pub and staring at a face across the room.  
“Who is that?”  
“New in town. Just moved into Cavendish Road opposite Kev. Seems like a nice bloke. Loaded too. We should introduce ourselves.”  
“What d’you mean ‘loaded’?”  
“Kev says he’s not renting, he bought the place. They’re big houses down there as well.”  
“They’re not that big, they’re just terraces.”  
“Got the extra level down in the basements though. Most of ‘em have been divided up into flats. Let’s go see if we can score a round off him.”_

Another quick montage followed, of various days and nights in the same pub. He watched - or rather Lister watched - as Edward smiled and laughed, bought drinks and played pool. The pixels shattered and swirled and now he was in a warm sunny garden. _  
“She’s too shy, man. I like girls with a bit of attitude, a bit of bite, you know?”  
“Who knows?” Edward smirked. “You get her alone, you might find out she’s got sharper teeth than you think.”  
He felt his cheeks going pink, and focused his attention on flicking a horsefly from the pale blue sleeve of his t-shirt. “I doubt it somehow.”   
“Aww, he’s getting embarrassed.”  
“She can’t be that shy. She left you those flowers at work. How many girls would do that?”  
“Maybe he’s just **hoping** it was someone else,” Jonesy grinned. “How’s Hayley these days?”  
“Alright, enough about me. I’m going to the loo.” He stood up and climbed over the seat, hoping his blush wasn’t too noticeable._

There was another brief montage and then he was walking swiftly down a quiet street and _...A figure loomed up in front of him and he nearly collided with it, he was so distracted. “Dave?”  
“Ed? What are you doing here?”  
“I was just passing. Did you want to go to the Aigburth tonight? We can grab a takeaway and walk down together... Are you okay?”  
“Oh, smeg it all, man. It’s just that freaky girl from work...”  
“That Shawna? What’s she done now?”   
“She’s broken into my smegging flat, that’s what!”  
“You’re kidding.”  
“No. She left flowers all over my damn bed.”  
“Have you called the police?”  
“What’s the point? I can’t prove it was her. I just....I just want to not be here right now, you know? It’s weirded me out.”  
“Totally. I understand. Let’s just go back to my place for a bit, yeah? Until you feel better.”  
“Oh, you don’t have to…”  
“I insist.”  
“Okay. That would be...nice. Thanks.”_

The pixels scattered and reformed again, and _he was sitting in a sparsely furnished white room, a mug of tea clasped in his hands._ “Details!” Rimmer barked. _He half-heartedly drained his mug. Now the adrenaline rush from his nasty discovery was ebbing away, chased by the calming decor and hot tea, he was starting to feel a little drained; but surely that was to be expected? He’d feel better in a few minutes. He just needed to rest._ The room went black and crackled like static. _“Dave!” He forced his eyes open. He didn’t remember closing them. “Just lie down for a little while and everything will be fine. You’ll feel better when you wake up.”_ There was another buzz of static, and _he was lying across the sofa, the room at an angle. He thought he detected a faint smell in the air, something weird but oddly familiar. Flowers...dead flowers...just like the ones in his bedroom. And he suddenly felt the creeping chill of a terrible realisation come over him…_

The scene changed again and suddenly he was somewhere else, _he was staggering down dark steps, his head reeling, his legs unsteady._ “Details!” _Dim candlelight cast flickering shadows into the corners. He saw himself, a hundred times over in sketches and photographs smothering the walls. He looked around, the fear inside him growing claws and fangs as he took in the room and started to understand the reality of what was happening, of the danger he was in. And in the furthest, darkest corner of the cellar, there was a shape moving, a figure stepping out of the shadows. “Don’t be afraid.”  
“Ed, I...I want to go home now,” his voice didn’t sound like his own, “I don’t feel well. I think I need to go to hospital.”  
“It will all feel better soon. Come here.”  
“I want to go home. Please, let me out, I just want to go home...please…”_

There was a blast of black static and then... _he was scrabbling on his hands and knees, crawling across the floor, his heart pounding in his chest. “Get away from me! Leave me alone!”  
“There’s no point trying to escape. I’m faster than you. I’m stronger than you.” The room whirled as he was grabbed and lifted, and then he was lying on his back. Edward’s face loomed over him. A hand touched his face, a finger traced his lips, the gentle touch at odds with the terrifying strength. _ There was another burst of black static.

_...“Let me go! Let me go!” He struggled desperately, trying to get up, but Edward was on top of him, keeping him pinned down. He had the knife in his hand and he was cutting his own wrist open. “What are you doing???” He felt fingers on his throat, heard his t-shirt rip, and he lashed out wildly. Edward suddenly jerked back with a hiss, apparently in pain. And he realised that he had maybe one shot, one split second to stop this, to save himself. And if it failed, then he was going to die in this room. He grabbed hold of the knife and slashed blindly upwards, heard a yell of pain that rang in his ears, felt the hot wet spatter of blood across his face and flung himself sideways. They both spilled onto the ground and, finally free, he sprang to his feet and then he was running, running for the stairs, up and through the hallway, fuelled by the adrenaline of sheer terror. The front door loomed up in front of him and he scrabbled frantically at the catches, expecting at any moment to feel arms close around him, a furious roar against his ear as the beast dragged him back down into its lair where there would be no escape, but then the catch gave and he was out. Out into the orange light of the lamp-posts and the street that looked so normal... so ordinary...But he was too dizzy and sick to run anymore. He crumpled to the ground in the middle of the road, his head spinning like a roundabout, the taste of blood in his mouth, too weak and disorientated to even crawl any further and pure instinct kicked in to make him do the only thing he could still physically do to protect himself. He started screaming._


	18. Chapter 18

Rimmer lifted the visor, his hands trembling slightly from the sense of fear transferred by the memories. No wonder Lister still had nightmares. But something was bothering him, “Why are the memories such poor quality? Why is there so much static interference?”  
“The static is caused when it is difficult to play back a memory,” the MindMap voice replied cheerfully. “It may have been repressed.”  
“You mean they’re worse than what I already saw?”  
“Memories can be repressed for all kinds of reasons. They can still be accessed but it will take a few minutes more.”  
“Okay, well hurry up. I’m running out of time and I need to know everything.” He felt the floor beneath him tremble fiercely - the storm still in full flow outside - and gritted his teeth. “Besides, at this rate the power could go at any moment.” He snapped the visor back on, “Just show me the missing bits.”

_Now the adrenaline rush from his nasty discovery was ebbing away, chased by the calming decor and hot tea, he was starting to feel a little drained; but surely that was to be expected? He’d feel better in a few minutes. He just needed to rest._

_Edward sat down on the footstool in front of him. “What are you going to do tonight? Do you really want to go back to your flat?”  
“I have to go back sometime. I suppose once the door’s fixed, I’ll feel better.”  
“You can stay here. If you want.”  
He felt his cheeks heating and quickly looked away. “I couldn’t put you to that kind of trouble. You’ve been so nice already.”  
“It’s no trouble. Honestly. I’d like it if you stayed. I like...you.”  
His heart started to race. Was this really happening? Was this what he thought it was?_

_The empty mug was gently prised out of his hand and cool fingers slipped through his. “I’ve been watching you for a long time. There’s something special about you. Almost like an aura. People are drawn to you.”  
He laughed nervously. “People like Shawna? Yeah, great.”  
“Everyone. It’s a gift. A rare and valuable gift. And I’ve seen you watching me.”  
“Oh, I...er...” Smeg, and he thought he’d hid it so well. Obviously not.  
“It’s okay.” Edward raised his hand to his lips and kissed it. He felt a quiet thrill go through him. “You don’t have to say anything. I know what you want. And I want it too.” He turned his hand over and kissed his palm. He watched, enthralled. His head was starting to spin with excitement, and he was starting to get hard already. “Ed. Edward…” _

_He nuzzled lightly against his hand, his lips moving to the inside of his wrist. “I’ve been waiting for tonight for a long, long time. Longer than you can imagine. I’ve been waiting for someone like you. And I’m going to make you mine...” he felt hot breath against his skin, titillating his senses as the words titillated his ears, “...completely.” Soft lips pressed against the pulse of his inner wrist in a kiss that made him gasp, and this was all happening so suddenly, but he liked it, he wanted it, and then….._

_Pain. He gasped and tried to yank his arm back but Ed was holding him fast. He was...he was... **biting** him. He could actually feel his teeth in him, and an agonising pulling, sucking sensation. He started to feel faint, nauseous. The combination of pain and shock had left him voiceless, powerless. What the fuck was happening? What the fuck..._

_“Dave!” He forced his eyes open. He didn’t remember closing them. Everything was hazy, distorted. “Just lie down for a little while and everything will be fine. You’ll feel better when you wake up. And I’ll have everything ready for you.” Edward was on the sofa with him now, cradling him. There was blood on his bottom lip, and he licked it away with a strange smile. He felt his stomach churn at the sight. Then he was lying across the sofa, the room at an angle. He detected a faint smell in the air, something weird but oddly familiar. Flowers...dead flowers…_

The scene changed, and he was back in the cellar. _Dim candlelight cast flickering shadows into the corners. He saw himself, a hundred times over in sketches and photographs smothering the walls. In the centre of the room, two open coffins lay side by side. Next to one of them was a small table. On the table, there was a sharp butcher knife. He looked around, the fear inside him growing claws and fangs as he took in the room - everything in it, and about it, the horribly familiar smell of decay- and started to understand the reality of what was happening, of the danger he was in. And in the furthest, darkest corner of the cellar, there was a shape moving, a figure stepping out of the shadows. “Don’t be afraid.”  
“Ed, I...I want to go home now,” his voice didn’t sound like his own, “I don’t feel well. I think I need to go to hospital.”  
“It will all feel better soon. Come here.”  
“I want to go home. Please, let me out, I just want to go home...please…” _

_He backed away, trying to retreat back up the stairs, but the second he turned, Edward was there in front of him. He staggered away, confused and terrified, and more disoriented than ever. “How...how did you…?”  
“Shhh.” A hand reached towards him and he cringed away, then realised too late he was being herded back into the basement, away from the stairs.   
“It was you. You broke into my flat. The flowers, the notes. All of it. It was you all along. ”  
“Yes. Just like you were secretly hoping, if I’m not very mistaken. Aren’t you pleased?”  
“The coffins. Why are there coffins?” He could hear the panic seeping into his voice.  
“You’ll see. Come here.”_

_He tried to make a break for it, but he was too slow, too discombobulated. Tight arms locked around him. “Dave,” a voice said calmly against his ear, as he was carried back into the shadows, “you’re not going anywhere.”  
“Why are you doing this? What do you want?” He strained against the constricting hold.  
“We’re going to perform a little ritual down here, the two of us. Think of it as a wedding of sorts.”  
He fought helplessly, trying to get loose from the steely grip. Edward stared down at him, smiling at his futile struggles, and he froze. His eyes were different. They were red. They were glowing red, and his teeth were...wrong. Fear paralysed him, fear like he’d never felt before. “No. This is not happening...THIS IS NOT HAPPENING!” He heard the scream, barely aware it was coming from him._

_Instinct took over and he thrashed like a wildcat, knowing only that he had to get away. Edward let him go and he fell to the ground. “It’s no use, Dave.” He was scrabbling on his hands and knees, crawling across the floor, not even knowing what direction he was going, his heart pounding in his chest. “Get away from me! Leave me alone!”  
“There’s no point trying to escape. I’m faster than you. I’m stronger than you.” The room whirled as he was grabbed and lifted, and then he was lying on his back in an open coffin lined with red velvet and rotting rose petals. Edward’s face loomed over him. A hand touched his face, a finger traced his lips, the gentle touch at odds with the terrifying strength he’d just exhibited. He tried to get up but was quickly pinned back down as Edward climbed in too, knelt astride him, and picked up the knife. “No! No!”  
“Shhh. Don’t try to fight. This is meant to be.”  
“Please! Please! Just let me go! I won’t tell anyone! Just let me go!”  
“Relax. It will only hurt for a few moments, and then we’ll be together forever.” _

_He watched in horror as Edward used the tip of the knife to slice open his own wrist. His stomach lurched and he retched. “Oh my god! What are you doing???” The blood pattered down over his shirt, his face, his mouth. He twisted away with a cry of revulsion.  
“Drink it.”  
“No! Fuck, no!”  
“Do it.”  
“No! Please, just stop! Stop this! Let me go! Let me go!” _

_He struggled desperately to squirm away but it was no use. Edward’s other hand gripped his jaw, forcing him to look up. Those red eyes stared into his, and he felt a strange sense of calm descend over him, acceptance...maybe even excitement. He was suddenly very aware of how close they were, the heat and weight of Edward’s body against his, the physical sensation strangely alluring even in his terror. And part of him did still want him, even now. “It’s going to be okay,” Edward whispered, putting down the knife and lying down on top of him, “It’s going to be wonderful. You’re going to be so perfect. And you’re going to be mine. Until the end...of...time.”_

_Fingers caressed his throat. That face was coming nearer, those teeth were coming nearer, and he was both enthralled and terrified. The fingers curled around his collar and he heard his t-shirt rip. Suddenly Edward jerked back with a hiss, apparently in pain. And in an abrupt flash of clarity, he realised that he had maybe one shot, one split second to stop this, to save himself. And if it failed, then he was going to die in this room._

“Stop!” Rimmer quickly called a halt to the memory. He wasn’t sure his squeamish disposition would take any more and he couldn’t face another gory replay of Lister’s escape. He was still shaken, still trying to comprehend everything he’d seen. But there was something he had to see one more time. Just to be absolutely, positively, 100% certain. “Wind it back. Back. There!” 

_He saw himself, a hundred times over in sketches and photographs smothering the walls. There he was at work, at his flat, in the garden of the pub just a few days ago…_ “Pause!”

Rimmer stared in disbelief. “Zoom in! Closer!” The photograph was whole in this memory, showing a table full of young men sharing a laugh. But there was Lister, in his blue t-shirt, with the smile that hadn’t changed in thirty years - or three million. And it was, undoubtedly, the same picture Lister had found on the _Demeter_.

The image stuttered suddenly and the program shut down. Rimmer ripped off the headset, looking around, now more afraid than ever. The lights and screens were flickering. “Oh no. Oh no.” He ran to the intercom. “Kryten! Cat! Get down here now! The electrics are going haywire, it’s coming!”  
“It might just be interference. The storm is playing havoc with our systems, Sir. I think we’re about to get hit with a doozy.”  
“And if that thing is coming this way, I don’t know what I’m about to get hit with! Me _or_ Lister!”  
“I’ll try to-”

Rimmer didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. A massive lightning strike shook the ship like a child’s rattle. The table tipped over, the water glass smashed on the ground, and the power died, everything going black. His light-bee dropped uselessly to the floor. 


	19. Chapter 19

The medibay was in perfect darkness. There was no window, no way for the starlight or even the lightning to penetrate the room to cast any sort of illumination, and no sound apart from the ongoing noise of the storm; the engines dead, the background hum of electricity gone. Lighter objects began to drift into the air as the gravity field started to break down. A footstep crunched on broken glass in the silence. Eyes that could see in the dark glanced downwards, and spied the discarded scalpel lying amidst the shards. A pale hand reached out and picked it up, carefully avoiding not just the glass, but another object that had fallen to the floor too. The scalpel was pocketed, and the dark figure moved towards the mind scanner, where Lister was still deeply asleep.

  
_He awoke in an unfamiliar room, in unfamiliar pajamas. He felt like crap. His right wrist ached. It was wrapped in a bandage. Something bad had happened last night, something awful. He could feel it like a mental nausea, a deep sense that things were not right that went beyond the strangeness of his surroundings. Snippets of the night before started to crawl into his mind like insects, and he felt his hair stand on end._

_When he got up, he found two police officers, a man and a woman, drinking coffee at the small kitchen table. “Good morning.”  
“Where am I?”  
“A safe house. We didn’t think it was a good idea for you to return to your flat last night.”  
“How are you feeling, pet? How much do you remember about what happened?”  
“Not great. And not loads, actually. I mean, I know what happened but there’s a lot of gaps.”  
“We thought that might be the case. Sit down. Get some food in you.”  
“I’m not really hungry. I feel sort of sick, to be honest.”  
“Not surprising,” the woman said. “Tell me, before things turned nasty yesterday, did he happen to give you anything to eat or drink?”  
“Cup of tea.”  
“Did you see him make it?”  
“No.”_

_The officers shared a knowing look, as if this confirmed their suspicions. “We think your mate - if you can call him that - must have popped a little extra something in your brew,” the man told him.  
“Like what?”  
“Could have been a whole cocktail of stuff, but acid’s the most likely. It doesn’t show up on swabs and your test was clear.”  
“You drug tested me?”  
“When we arrived you were in quite a state. Understandable really in the circumstances, but it was quite obvious within moments of us getting there that you were tripping balls, lad.”  
“Seriously?”  
“You were insisting he wasn’t human, raving about glowing eyes and stuff. It’s probably for the best you don’t remember. The whole situation must have been frightening enough without hallucinating at the same time.”   
“We’ll need to take a proper statement from you now you’re a bit more with it, but we’ll let you wake up first. Have yourself a shower and some brekkie.”  
“My clothes…”  
“Gone to forensics. There’s clean ones in your room.”_

_Instead of getting up, he put his aching head in his hands. “I still don’t understand. Why? Why did he do this?”  
“Well, we need a bit more information, but on first impressions it seems like our man has a little infatuation with you that’s got a bit out of control. Unrequited love can make people a bit screwy sadly. I’m assuming it **is** unrequited?”  
“I...er…”  
“If it wasn’t before, it certainly is now, I imagine.”  
“You don’t need to tell us everything right now,” the female officer interjected firmly, with a warning look at her partner. “We’ll discuss it properly later, when you give your statement.”  
The male officer stood up to make more coffee and gave Lister a pat on the shoulder. “Try and take it as a compliment, hey kid?” His colleague glared at him.   
“The most important thing is that you’re okay,” she said, quickly changing the subject. “The paramedics looked you over last night and apart from a few cuts and bruises, you’re fine. Your obs were a bit off but that’s most likely down to a mix of shock and whatever drugs he gave you, but it looks like they’ve worn off alright. You’re going to be just fine, and you’re safe here for the time being.”  
He read between the lines of those words. “So you haven’t found him?”  
“No.”_

In the drive room, Kryten counted down the seconds in his head. He had reset the main circuit breaker and was waiting for the restart sequence to complete. The gravity was already failing, but they could withstand that for a few moments. By his reckoning they had a good twenty minutes before oxygen would start to become a problem and it should only be about two minutes before the emergency power kicked back in, and maybe another five to ten minutes to restore full power, so that was reassuring. His main concern was getting the doors operational so he and the Cat could get back to the medi-bay. With the power completely out, Mr Rimmer was only useful as a paperweight, and that meant Mr Lister was totally alone.

A hand closed around the bottom rail of the bed and wheeled it out of the mind scanner. Lister didn’t wake. The IV needle was plucked carefully from his arm, and a cool tongue licked away the resulting teardrop of blood from his skin. There was a quiet sucking sound as the rest of the drip bag was drained of its contents. The figure regarded the still-locked door for a moment; it would not be able to get out the same way it had got in. With a single blow, it punched through the thin metal and dragged the door open, the mechanics screaming. Tiny pieces of dust and debris floated in the air, along with an increasing number of loose objects: latex gloves, cotton swabs, bandages and broken glass. 

Lister stirred. His eyelids lifted just slightly, but he saw nothing in the unrelenting darkness, and they closed again. His wrist was aching, he could feel a soft tight bandage on it. Where was he? _When_ was he? _In the small scruffy bathroom of the safe house, he peeled off his borrowed clothes. Before getting into the shower, he unravelled the gauze bandage from his wrist so it wouldn’t get wet. He flexed it cautiously. He didn’t remember what he’d done, but it was damn smegging sore. The inside flesh was bruised black and swollen, but two raw red puncture marks like a pair of eyes were still visible in the centre. He stared at them for a long moment. His head started to throb, and then his stomach rolled and he was violently sick into the toilet._ Someone lifted him purposefully into their arms, as easily as if he weighed nothing. His lips moved in his semi-sleep but no sound came out. “Rimmer?”  
The figure carried him away out of the room.

_10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1._ The generator kicked in and Red Dwarf sprang back to life with a roar of activity. The emergency lights came on, the air vents started pumping oxygen again, various small objects clattered to the ground as full gravity returned. Kryten breathed a sigh of relief and started working on restoring full power. “Mr Rimmer? Mr Rimmer, are you receiving me?”

In the medibay, Rimmer’s form erupted from his light-bee, still limited to soft-light. He looked around, dazed. Kryten’s voice was blathering from the intercom, but he paid no attention. The door was shattered, the bed empty. Lister was gone. The loose cannula was trailing on the ground, the drip bag totally emptied. “No! No!”  
“Mr Rimmer? What’s happening?”  
“He’s gone! Lister’s gone! He’s taken him! How long was I out?”  
“Only a couple of minutes. They can’t have gone far.”  
Suddenly Rimmer heard an explosion a short distance away. “Get down here now!” he bellowed into the intercom, and then hurtled out into the hallway towards the sound. 


	20. Chapter 20

  
Rimmer bounded through the corridors and turned a corner to see Cat doubled over, two bazookoids at his feet. One of them was still smoking. “Cat! What happened?”  
“I got one shot in, and then the sickness hit me. That smell…”  
“Which way did they go?”  
“I didn’t see.”  
“You didn’t see which way the 7-foot tall nightmare beast went?!”  
“Everything went swirly!” Cat protested irritably. “And it wasn’t a big beast, it was just a dude.”  
Rimmer went cold. “A dude? What did he look like?”  
“He was wearing black.”  
“Who cares what he was wearing??? What did he _look_ like?”  
“I dunno. You monkeys all look the same to me.”  
“Cat!”  
“I wasn’t looking at his face! I was aiming for his shoulder so I wouldn’t shoot Gerbil-Face by accident! He was carrying him away.”  
“You shot at him while he was holding Lister?!”  
“Yeah, but I wasn’t quick enough. He moved too fast, and next thing I knew everything was spinning.”

Rimmer clutched at his hair, feeling panic bubbling up ever further inside of him. “We have to find them. Can you follow the smell?”  
“I’m going to need a minute. Right now it’s the _only_ thing I can smell.”  
Rimmer could smell it now too - although not as strongly as Cat obviously could - a distinctive sweet-sour tang in the air. He recognised it. It had been there in Lister’s memories; in Edward’s sitting room, in the depths of the cellar. And inside the coffin.

“I can’t believe this,” he said, almost to himself. “He was right. He wasn’t just delirious, he was right about everything.”  
“What are you talking about?” Cat straightened up with a frown.  
“The monster _is_ someone he knows! It attacked him years ago, back when he was still on Earth.”   
“You said he was just confused!”  
“I didn’t think it was possible! Even Lister didn’t think it was possible, not at first. He didn’t remember everything.”  
“So how do _you_ know?” Cat asked suspiciously.  
Rimmer hesitated, unwilling to admit that he’d plundered Lister’s deepest subconscious without consent. “I...talked to Lister after you two left. I figured it out.”  
“Figured what out? What the hell is it?”  
“It’s a vampire.” Rimmer felt horror and disbelief creeping over him just at hearing himself say the words out loud. “It’s a smegging vampire.”

“It’s a _what?_ Have you lost your damn mind?”  
“It’s an ancient blood-sucking, shape-shifting, coffin-sleeping monster, what else would you call it?”  
“Well, if it’s a vampire then why didn’t it kill him before? How did he escape it last time?”  
Rimmer froze. Lister’s memory replayed in his head: the _real_ memory, not the alternative version his mind had constructed.

_-fingers curled around his collar and he heard his t-shirt rip. Suddenly Edward jerked back with a hiss, apparently in pain-_

“Oh no,” Rimmer whispered. “No, no, no.” He turned and ran back to the medibay with Cat in pursuit.  
“What now? Where are you going?”  
Rimmer tore into the room and dropped to his knees amongst the mess and debris, searching frantically. Finally, he saw what he was looking for. A silver cross on a chain, still lying on the floor amidst the broken glass. With a trembling hand, Rimmer reached down to pick it up. His hand went through it uselessly. “No,” he whispered again. He balled up his fists against his face, his eyes screwed shut as he let out a guttural moan of despair.

“Ooh, shiny thing.” Cat bent down to scoop it up, “This is Lister’s, right? How come it’s on the floor?”  
“I took it off,” Rimmer croaked, without opening his eyes. “That smegging cross is what saved Lister’s life three million years ago. And _I took it off_.”  
“Why?”  
“You can’t wear metal in the mind scanner. It’s like an MRI.”  
“Why was he in the mind scanner?”  
“Aaarrrrggghhh! _Because_ -” He was interrupted by Kryten bursting in.   
“Sirs, what’s happening?”  
Rimmer forced himself to focus, and eased himself back to his feet, stony-faced. “We have to find Lister,” he said, “Now.”  
“If we go back to the drive room we can run a scan…”  
“There’s no time. Cat, you’ll have to track them. Follow that smell.”  
“Ugh. Okay, okay.”

The full power came back online, the lights bursting back into life, the mind scanner powering up with a whoosh that made them all jump. “Strange. Why is that on?” Kryten asked.   
Rimmer’s image flickered, his uniform turning from red to blue as he switched back to hard-light. “I’ll explain on the way,” he said, defeated. He reached out and took Lister’s necklace somberly from Cat.   
“Is that Mr Lister’s…?”  
“Yes. Like I said, I’ll explain on the way. I don’t think we have long.” Lister’s earlier words haunted him. _He wants to finish what we started - In the garden? - In Liverpool._ Rimmer’s fingers tightened on the necklace. “I don’t think _Lister_ has long.”

  
_Wake up. Wake up._

Lister forced open his heavy eyelids. A face looked down at him; a face he’d thought he’d never see again outside his nightmares. “Edward.” He mouthed the name more than said it. He was so weak he could barely move.   
“David Lister. At last.” Edward’s hand stroked his cheek. He was wearing soft black velvet gloves. “It’s been a loooooong time.”  
Lister stared up at him in numb terror. “How is this possible? How are you here? How did you find me?”  
“So many questions. But I think you know the answer to all of them, or nearly all, if you think hard enough.”

Lister took a deep breath, trying to clear his foggy head. All his senses felt deadened, muffled, like he was experiencing reality through a filter. They were in a dimly lit room. He was lying in some kind of deep wooden box, lined with dry crumbly earth and decomposing flowers. The smell of them filled his head.

“This is impossible,” he whispered. “You should be dead. You should be dead and gone, why aren’t you _dead?_ ” He tried to sit up. Pain shot up his arms, his head started spinning, and he slumped back down uselessly. He just managed to raise his trembling hands high enough to see them. His heart slammed in shock. The bandage on his right arm was gone, and both his wrists had been neatly sliced open. He was bleeding out. He made a choked sound of helpless horror.

“You seem surprised. But deep down, you’ve known for days that I was coming for you,” he heard Edward say.  
“The dreams,” he whispered, still staring in shock at his bloody hands. He couldn’t look away. “They weren’t dreams at all. They were warnings.”  
“No. They were a summons. As soon as my ship came close enough you heard my call, and you came to me.”  
“I didn’t know. How could I possibly?”  
“But you felt the pull. You were drawn to the place. Every time you’ve closed your eyes these last few days, you’ve found yourself doing what? The same thing over and over. Walking towards me. I told you that night that you couldn’t escape me. That this was your destiny.”  
“Oh God,” Lister breathed, panic starting to overwhelm him, “What _are_ you?”  
“You really don’t understand, do you? Let me refresh your memory. Let me show you.” Edward closed his eyes and Lister gasped sharply as he fell headlong into memories he hadn’t faced in far too long.

“ _I know what you want. And I want it too….l’m going to make you mine...completely.”  
He was **biting** him. What the fuck. What the fuck…  
“The coffins. Why are there coffins???”  
“We’re going to perform a little ritual down here, the two of us. Think of it as a wedding of sorts.”  
His eyes were red. They were glowing red, and his teeth were...wrong.  
“No. This is not happening...THIS IS NOT HAPPENING!”   
He was lying on his back in an open coffin lined with red velvet and rotting rose petals. He watched in horror as Edward used the tip of the knife to slice open his own wrist. “Drink it.”  
“No! Fuck, no!”  
Edward’s other hand gripped his jaw, forcing him to look up. Those red eyes stared into his, and he felt a strange sense of calm descend over him, acceptance...maybe even excitement. He was suddenly very aware of how close they were, the heat and weight of Edward’s body against his, the physical sensation strangely alluring even in his terror. And part of him did still want him, even now. “It’s going to be okay,” Edward whispered, lying down on top of him, “It’s going to be wonderful. You’re going to be so perfect. And you’re going to be mine. Until the end...of...time.”_

Lister heaved in a breath that wanted to be a scream as Edward released his mind. His eyes were wide with shock. Edward smiled affectionately. “ _Now_ do you know what I am, Dave?” His fangs gleamed against his bottom lip.


	21. Chapter 21

Rimmer and Kryten followed Cat down what seemed like a never-ending flight of stairs descending ever deeper into the ship.  
“How much further?” Rimmer snapped, hideously aware of the seconds ticking past.  
“How the hell should I know?” Cat griped back. “I’m just following the scent!”  
“If you hadn’t insisted on swanning off leaving me on my own, this wouldn’t have happened. I just want to make that clear.”  
“And if you hadn’t left the bazookoids in your room in the first place, I wouldn’t’ve had to. We even asked you straight out before we left if there was anything we needed to know about the spooky dreams he was talking about! But, oh no. ‘He’s just confused’, you said. ‘It’s not connected’, you said. Idiot.”  
“I’m sorry! I didn’t think it likely that some bloke Lister had a scrap with over three million years ago on a far-distant planet might actually be an undead monster who had hunted him across time and space and was now onboard the ship with us!”   
“Well, why not?!”   
“Well, for a start, I didn’t catch his name at the time, but the ghastly abomination with the glowing red demon eyes that I saw in the gardens didn’t strike me as an ‘ _Edward_ ’!” Rimmer fumed.

“I still don’t understand,” Kryten pitched in. “Why didn’t Mr Lister just tell us all of this before?”  
“Lots of reasons,” Rimmer said grimly. He hadn’t told them _absolutely_ everything he’d uncovered in Lister’s memories. “But mostly, I’m guessing, because he thought it sounded crazy. And it does. Until they came face to face in the garden tonight, even he didn’t really believe there could be a connection. Why would he? All he knew was that a long time ago someone had gone bonkers and tried to kill him. He didn’t think there was anything supernatural about it, he thought he was just a regular guy.”  
“A regular guy with glowing red eyes who can move faster than a bullet?” Cat interjected. “What kind of people was he hanging out with back then?!”  
“It disguised itself as human, just like it did on the _Demeter_. Remember what 273 said? That the thing walked among the crew? No-one ever suspected.”  
“You’d think the part where the guy tried to drink his blood would’ve been a giveaway.” Cat raised an eyebrow.

“I told you, Lister’s recollection of what really happened that night is sketchy at best. He’s always thought it’s because Edward drugged him, but he didn’t. It’s because he _fed_ on him.”  
“If someone used me as a walking vending machine, I wouldn’t forget it in a hurry.”  
“The human memory is notoriously unreliable at the best of times, Sir. People tend to see things, and remember things, in the way that makes most sense to them.”  
“He was already woozy from the blood loss and in denial about what he really saw, so his brain just...patched together a memory that made all the pieces fit together and blocked out the stuff that was too weird and frightening.” Rimmer shuddered at the reminder of what he’d seen, and he hadn’t even lived it. “Spiked tea was a far more reasonable and palatable explanation for everything, and it meant he didn’t need to question the gaps too hard.”

“This is all well and good, but did you actually see anything when you were snooping around in his memories that tells us how to kill this thing?” Cat demanded.  
“I wasn’t snooping! I was trying to help! But the cross seemed to be a deterrent if nothing else.” Rimmer looked down again at Lister’s necklace in his hand. “Or maybe it’s the silver. Or is that werewolves?”  
“The idea of silver having protective qualities against the supernatural is prevalent in many cultures throughout human history. Such folklore often originates from a grain of truth,” Kryten said. “It would explain why the beast shied away from the confrontations with both you and I before it regained full strength.”  
“It does?”  
“Your light-bee and my circuit boards both have some silver components in their construction.”  
“So you two are vamp-proof?” Cat asked brightly. “Great. You don’t need me.”  
“I fear our advantage may be counter-balanced by the creature’s influence over electrical power,” Kryten replied glumly. “It nearly shut me down in our last encounter, and it’s stronger now than it was then.”  
“So what are we gonna do?”  
Rimmer squeezed the cross in his hand. “Pray.”

  
“Why me?” Lister asked. He felt sick and couldn’t stop shivering. His bleeding wrists were hugged to his chest, the severed nerves tingling. Perhaps if he could keep talking he could stay awake, perhaps there was still a chance the others would find them before it was too late.

“To be honest, at first, I never intended to turn you,” Edward said. “You were just going to be...a toy, I suppose. A pretty little thing to keep around for satisfying my various urges. Maintaining my kind of diet discreetly is hard, and you were a perfect solution. Poor little orphan, impulsive and unreliable, everyone’s friend but nobody’s responsibility. Even if people noticed you were gone, they’d probably not worry too much. And if anyone got suspicious, well, everyone knew that Shawna was weird, and so very pitifully obsessed with you.” Edward smiled down at him. “But after watching you for a while, I realised what a waste that would be. You were charming. Appealing. Disarming. People flocked around you, even without the kind of powers I have. And to be honest, I’d become quite taken with you myself. Once our eyes had met over the pool table a few times, I realised that the feeling was mutual.” 

Lister closed his eyes. He didn’t want to think about that. Those feelings were so twisted now, so confused, so entwined with darkness that it made him feel queasy.  
“But after I got away, you could have had anyone,” he insisted. “Why would you go through all of this to find me? Why couldn’t you just let me go?”  
“Aside from anything else, because we were already bonded.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“After you drove that knife into the side of my neck and bolted, I had to think quickly. I could hear the commotion out on the street and knew it wasn’t possible to catch you. But it didn’t matter either way. You couldn’t truly escape, it was already too late. I could sense you, wherever you went. I was right here -” he touched Lister’s temple lightly, “-inside your mind. Even though we didn’t complete our union, you tasted my blood that night. Some of it went in your mouth. Not enough, but enough to create a link. I tore down one of the pictures from the wall to help me focus my energy, and I disappeared. I had another house in London under a different name. I hid out there for a while; just to wait until things quietened down and I could make all the necessary preparations to get you back, but I was keeping tabs on you.”  
“After I drove that knife into your neck, most people would have got the hint,” Lister growled under his breath. He could feel himself getting weaker, colder, with every passing second.

“It came as quite a shock when one day the connection suddenly faltered,” Edward confessed. “I could still feel you, but you were far away, at the end of a long tunnel. I couldn’t place you. It was difficult without raising suspicion, but I did everything I could to find you again. I spent months searching but you’d vanished - literally, it turned out - off the face of the earth. And then the connection was gone. Completely. I thought you were dead...Until a few days later, when I saw the news.”  
“The accident,” Lister whispered.  
Edward nodded. “Suddenly I knew _exactly_ where you were. The whole of humanity knew.” Edward carefully took his hands and inspected the wounds, making Lister wince and tense up nervously. “I just had to catch up with you.”

”But why?” Lister pleaded. “Why wait three million years for me, when you could have picked someone - anyone - else?”  
“What more proof did I need that we were supposed to be together? Only an immortal _could_ wait three million years for you, and the universe had clearly marked you as someone special. The last human, destined to outlive every other member of his species. And then destined to live forever. Fate had made it clear: David Lister is not supposed to die. You were born, and you were spared, for one purpose.” Edward’s eyes flashed red for a moment. “For _me_.”


	22. Chapter 22

Lister tried in vain to pull his damaged hands out of Edward’s grasp, but he was feeble as a kitten, numb and giddy from blood loss, and it hurt too much. “Listen, even if you turn me, what are we going to do for the rest of eternity?” he protested. “What are we going to live off? Everyone’s _gone_.”  
“Your friend upstairs will keep us going for a while. He’s an interesting flavour, but perfectly palatable.”  
“You leave Cat alone!” Lister snarled, his heart pounding.  
“Cat? Huh. I thought there was something in the taste I recognised. It’s been a long time since I’ve had one of those. Still, I suppose I owe him my thanks. His little contribution gave me the strength to make it to your ship. I was a husk. Can you imagine how it feels to be starving to death for millions of years, and not die?”   
“I don’t want to find out!”  
“Relax. We’ll find a GELF colony somewhere to sustain us. If times get hard, or if we need to lay low for a while, we’ll hibernate.” 

He let go of Lister’s wrists, plucked off his velvet gloves, and picked up a handful of the dirt and petals around him, letting them fall through his fingers. “I’ve already made a nest for you, see?”  
“That’s what this is? That’s what I could smell before? On the _Demeter_? In...in the cellar? Your nest?”  
“The natural elements seem to help preserve us, keep our strength up. Unfortunately, they don’t last long. Eventually everything withers and turns to dust.” He smiled ruefully. “Everything but us. Speaking of which…” He reached into his pocket and withdrew the blood-stained scalpel. Lister immediately recoiled, but Edward sliced open his own finger. “Watch,” he whispered. He trailed a line of blood over the incision and ragged bite marks in Lister’s right wrist. It burned. Lister drew in a sharp hiss of breath as his arm throbbed with pain. “Ah, _smeg_...god.”  
Edward let go of him and he pulled the arm back protectively to his chest. “Take a look,” Edward encouraged. He did. The arm hurt like hell but...it was perfect. Not a scratch remained. He stared at it, speechless.

Edward leaned over and stroked his hair. “The pain will wear off quicker than you think. It’s worth it, wouldn’t you say? Now imagine what else it can fix, inside _and_ out.” Lister swallowed hard. Edward put a gentle hand under his chin, gazing into his eyes. “Not that you don’t still have a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ now, but you’re in your fifties. You’re getting old, and older every day. Think how good it will feel to be young again. To be young _forever_. I’m not trying to kill you, Dave. I never was. I’m trying to _save_ you.”  
Lister tore his eyes away to stare again at the smooth skin of his mended arm. His jaw clenched. “Maybe I don’t want to be saved.” Summoning all the strength he had left, he lunged for the scalpel.

  
The scent led the other three down into the dark windowless depths of the storage hold. Rimmer felt the floor beneath them give the faintest quiver but heard nothing. “Are we so deep in the ship that we can’t hear the storm anymore, or are we finally passing through it?”  
“Hopefully a bit of both, Sir. It’s a long trek back to the drive room if we take another direct hit.”  
“If we do, can we make it back before the oxygen runs out?” Cat asked.  
“Bit late to worry about it now if not,” Rimmer remarked dryly.  
“That’s alright for _you_ to say.”  
“I think we’ll be fine, Sir.”

Cat tensed, sniffing the air. “They’re close. I can smell them both; it _and_ Chinchilla Chops.”  
“Is he okay?” Rimmer demanded.  
“He’s weak. Very weak. And he’s scared. But he’s alive.”  
“Okay,” Rimmer relaxed slightly. “What’s the plan?”  
“You’re asking me?!”  
“Of course not. I’m asking Kryten. He’s the plan guy. You’re the muscle.”  
“So what are you?”  
“The moral support.”  
“I’m afraid I don’t have a plan, Sir. If you’ve got a stubborn stain that needs dealing with, _then_ I’m the plan guy. Vampires are somewhat outside of my area of expertise.”  
“Well, we have to do _something_.”  
“You’ve got the shiny cross,” Cat said. “Use that.”  
“How?”  
“I dunno. Throw it at the dude.”  
“Then what?”  
“I’ve got it,” Cat snapped his fingers. “Holy water! That always works in films! We load up a bunch of water pistols with holy water and fshhhhh…” he mimicked spraying.  
“A sound suggestion in theory, Sir, with just a few minor drawbacks-”  
“Ugh. Forget it!!!”  
“Oh for smeg’s sake,” Rimmer snapped, cocking his bazookoid. “Just shoot the crap out of it and don’t hit Lister!”

  
Edward grabbed his throat. “Nice try.” He swiftly whisked the blade away out of reach. “What’s the old saying? ‘Fool me once’?”  
Lister’s heart sank. “Edward...Edward, please…”  
“Shhh,” he pressed a blood-tipped finger to his lips. His eyes started to glow. Lister could feel himself getting weaker, could feel his limbs getting heavier, his muscles looser. He didn’t know if he was being hypnotised, or if his body was finally giving up. Edward eased him gently down onto his back. “If you’ve still got enough spark in you to try a trick like that, then you’re not quite ready for us to take the next step yet. But I can fix that.” Cool fingers carefully unwrapped Lister from the remains of his tattered, bloody black shirt. “Well, well. Your friends kindly removed that nasty trinket that was making this so tricky.” He caressed Lister’s naked throat and chest. “How thoughtful.” Lister wanted to push him away but, just like before, part of him couldn’t help but respond to the touch. It was like there was a switch in his brain that Edward could flip at will to turn him on.

Edward peeled off his own shirt and lay down on top of him. Lister tried to remember to breathe as their bodies met. Despite the terror, the pain, the awful feeling of his life dripping steadily away, despite _everything_ , the physical intimacy was intoxicating. “Still so handsome,” Edward murmured, nuzzling against him, their lips bare millimetres apart. “We’ve waited so long for this, haven’t we?” His lips brushed lightly against Lister’s, making him shiver with a combination of fear and arousal. Those lips were as soft as he’d always imagined, but he knew what lurked behind them. Edward smiled at the sound of his whimper. “You forgot so much about what happened back then,” he murmured, “that you forgot how much you wanted this.” He kissed him again, deeper this time, and Lister could feel himself responding all over, physically and mentally, as the memories flooded back. Yes. He _had_ wanted it. 

He had wanted the flowers and the love notes to be from Edward. He’d wanted Edward to be his secret admirer: to be obsessed with him. So many nights he’d come home from the pub to his lonely creaky bed, masturbating breathlessly in the dark, thinking of those lips, those eyes, all those brief shared looks that made him blush, made him hope, made him so helplessly horny. “I was there sometimes,” Edward whispered, reading his mind. “In your room with you. Watching you.” He started to kiss his neck. “Wishing I could be doing all those things you wanted me to do to you. But I had to wait until everything was arranged. I never thought I’d have to wait this long. Do you really want to wait any longer?”  
“No,” Lister moaned breathlessly, arching up against him.  
“Once you’ve given me what I want, I’ll give you what you want.” His hands ran up Lister’s thighs. “What we _both_ want.”  
“Please…” he whispered. He felt sick with a mix of terror and desire. “I don’t want to die.”  
Edward put a hand under his neck, tilting his head back to expose his throat. “You won’t.”

He felt Edward’s hair soft against his cheek, his mouth hot on his neck. There was a needle-sharp sting as fangs pricked his skin and he was helpless to stop it, he couldn’t resist, and then the pain took his breath away as those teeth sank deep into his throat. He gasped, his body going rigid as Edward pinned him down and sucked hard. “No!” he struggled to get his arms between them, to prise him off. “ _No!_ ” Edward took hold of his wrists and forced them down, wrapping his ankles tightly around Lister’s to stop him kicking, using his whole body to hold him powerless, motionless, as he drained him. Lister could do nothing but stare up helplessly into the darkness, feeling the little strength he had left ebbing away further and further with every pull of Edward’s mouth. His neck started to ache. His mind began to drift, either from weakness or just to escape the horror, until everything felt far away, even the pain, like he was falling down a long dark tunnel.

He didn’t know how much time passed but the next thing he was aware of was Edward sitting up, sliding away from him. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t feel anything. He was floating inside his own head, his vision swimming and out of focus. Everything felt detached. He was pretty sure he was dying. 

Edward pulled his gloves back on, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a small velvet box. “It’s time to complete our union,” he said softly. Inside the box was a shining silver wedding band. With great caution, he plucked it out and slipped it onto Lister’s ring finger. “Call me a traditionalist, but I believe these things should be done right.”   
_I never said ‘I do’,_ Lister thought, but he couldn’t speak. 

Edward picked up the scalpel again. “You taste so wonderful,” he told him tenderly, lifting his chin. “But I’m feeling full, and that stubborn little heart of yours just doesn’t want to stop beating. I’m as eager as you to consummate our relationship, so forgive me if I speed things along.” With one quick brutal sweep, he slit open Lister’s throat. 

He couldn’t lift a finger to stop him. He barely felt the pain. He started to choke, his lungs aching, straining for air that wasn’t there. His body started to spasm. Everything was going dark. He felt Edward’s lips on his again. “There we go. Your heart has almost stopped. Your blood is in me, and soon mine will be in you. And the universe can bid a fond farewell to the last human.”


	23. Chapter 23

Cat was leading the trio through the dark maze of crates when he stopped suddenly, tensing up. “Something’s wrong.”  
“What do you mean?” Rimmer asked.  
“I can smell blood. Too much blood.”   
“Whose?” Rimmer demanded, ashen-faced. Cat didn’t reply. Agitated, he leapt up on top of one of the piles of pallets to look around. Not too far away, there was a patch of warm flickering light emanating from between the rows. “I found them.” He took another deep breath, and instinctively bared his teeth. There was a smell in the air besides that of the vampire. Something more subtle than the blood. It was the smell of approaching death. “We need to hurry. Follow me.”

  
Edward lifted the scalpel again, turned it inwards, and carved a deep gash over his own heart. Blood flowed down over his chest and stomach. He wrapped his arms around Lister and lifted him up to a sitting position. He flopped in his arms like a limp ragdoll, barely conscious, almost dead. Cradling him tenderly, he pressed his mouth to the wound and let the blood flow inside.

At first, Lister felt nothing. He was shutting down, his mind so far from his body that nothing mattered anymore. Then he felt it: a burning pain in his throat as the gash there began to heal itself. Suddenly he could breathe again. He gasped, the oxygen hitting his brain like a shot of strong alcohol. Edward gently massaged his throat and he still had just enough reflex action left to swallow despite the pain. His fingers and toes started to tingle with pins and needles, like they were coming back to life. “More,” Edward whispered encouragingly, still holding him. He obeyed blindly, not enough presence of mind left to disobey. He swallowed again. And again. His whole body started to come alive. It started to feel...good. To _taste_ good. His strength returning, he reached up and clung to Edward’s arms, pulling him closer. Edward hissed softly, firmly moving the hand with the ring off him, but not letting go. “Yes. Good boy. You’re coming back to me already. You’re going to be so strong.”

Lister’s head was buzzing. His veins felt like they were pumping with fizzy lager, cold and effervescent. His nerves were singing. Everything felt _more_. It was incredible. _Edward_ was incredible. He was starting to feel horny again, almost drunk. He lapped hungrily at the spills of blood that had cascaded down Edward’s torso, his tongue playing over his skin with delight. He wanted to lick all of him, taste all of him. Edward took his face in his hands and kissed him again - and this time it was a deep messy kiss, tongues and blood and lust - but he quickly pulled away. “Don’t stop. You need more.” Lister needed no encouragement. He buried his face back in his chest, and Edward’s fingers were in his hair, and his heart was pounding like it was going to burst, and he couldn’t get enough.

And then the room exploded with bazookoid fire.

  
When they rounded the corner, it took a few seconds for Rimmer’s mind to fully process what he was seeing. One of the large storage crates had been dragged out of place and apparently emptied, and now stood alone, surrounded by small candles forming a strange sigil. Kneeling up inside the crate was a tall pale man. He had Lister in his arms, holding his face to his chest. They were both half-naked. And they were both covered in blood. He saw those long fingers tighten like claws in Lister’s dark curls, and something fiery inside him erupted like a volcano. Without another single second of hesitation, he swung the bazookoid up and started firing.

Two rounds hit Edward - one in the ribs, another in the shoulder - tearing chunks of flesh away and spraying blood in the air. He spun with a roar, his face immediately contorting, and dropped Lister, who collapsed forward onto his hands and knees. Edward stood up, his limbs stretching, joints and sinews snapping as his body twisted and transformed back into the massive demon creature Rimmer had seen before. He sprang out of the crate, snarling. Cat was firing too now, and although Rimmer could see the shots landing, the beast didn’t fall. Instead it charged at them, knocking them both flat on the floor in an instant, then vanishing. The bazookoid clattered out of Rimmer’s hands, but Cat managed to hang onto his, rolling with the blow and leaping back to his feet. “That all you got, Sucker?” he challenged, looking around frantically. The beast suddenly leapt out of the shadows at him. Kryten managed to scoop up Rimmer’s fallen gun and squeeze off two more shots, driving it back. The Edward-monster howled in fury.

Leaving the two of them to distract the thing, Rimmer launched himself towards Lister. He was still on his hands and knees in the crate, retching violently. “Lister! Are you okay?” He didn’t reply. He was visibly shaking, seemingly frozen with horror and unable to move or speak. Rimmer looked aghast at the blood drenching him; it was everywhere, smeared across his face, neck, chest and arms. He couldn’t tell how much of it was actually his, he couldn’t see any obvious injuries. “Where are you hurt? What did he do to you?”

Rimmer heard a crash as Kryten suddenly pole-axed backwards, his power apparently drained. He hit the ground hard, his head rolling away. The beast grabbed Cat by the throat, hurling him through the air, then swivelled to face Rimmer with a snarl. Next thing he knew it was looming over them. He quickly shielded Lister. “Get away from him!”

“You’re too late,” the beast rasped, leaning down into his face. Rimmer felt his stomach drop in fear and dread as it drew close to him. His knees started to shake. “It is done. He is miiiiiine now.” Behind him, Lister made an awful sound, a choked scream of utter despair that was too weak and too tortured to fully form. Rimmer’s fingers clenched into fists and he felt a sharp pain as something dug into his palm. The creature’s mouth stretched wide, displaying rows of sharp teeth ready to bite. With a terrified scream of his own, Rimmer thrust his arm forward and held up the silver cross. The beast snarled furiously and jerked backwards. “Begone, foul fiend!” Rimmer squawked, trying to bring to mind all the horror movies he’d ever seen and remember what you were supposed to say in these kind of circumstances. “Returneth to...somewhere else! Hell! Yes! Returneth to Hell where thou belongest!” He searched his brain frantically for some official-sounding Latin. “Canis cuniculus caseus! Amen!” It didn’t seem to have the desired effect.

Behind him, Lister started making frantic sounds of pain and he craned round, still holding the cross outstretched to keep Edward at bay. “What is it? What’s wrong?”  
“Get it off!” Lister cried out, one hand stretched out in front of him. “ _Get it off!_ ”  
“What? _What?!”_ Suddenly Rimmer saw it. A silver ring was burning into Lister’s finger, a tiny wisp of smoke curling up from the surface of his skin. “What the smeg?!” With his free hand he managed to grab the ring and tug it off. It left a perfect red circle seared into the flesh. Rimmer stared at the scar, dismay flooding through him as he realised what it meant.  
“You can take it off,” Edward roared behind him, “but you can’t take away the mark. He is damned. He is mine.”  
“ _No!_ ” Rimmer dropped the ring and, suffused with fury, he lunged forward with the silver cross held out in front of him. 

Edward growled fiercely. His eyes glowed red and Rimmer felt his light-bee stutter, the power disrupted. His projection flickered, and the cross dropped out of his hand. He gulped. If he bent down to pick it up he was leaving himself wide open to attack. Then he remembered what had happened in the garden, what Kryten had told him about his light-bee, and Cat’s strategic battle advice. He reached inside his chest, grasped his bee, and hurled it at the beast. His projection briefly vanished, but his light-bee hit the thing right between the eyes. It roared in rage and pain.

Rimmer re-emerged on the floor at its feet and quickly reached out to snatch back hold of the necklace. “Begone!” he shouted again, leaping up and shoving the cross hard against the creature’s bare chest. It gave a deafening screech, lurching backwards. A toxic smell like burning garbage filled the air. Rimmer saw a boggy wound open up on the thing’s chest where the cross had touched it. The beast staggered back, its red eyes fixing on Lister. Rimmer saw him look up, as if his head had been dragged up against his will. “ _I’ll be back for you!_ ” Edward roared, seething. His body crumpled in on itself, the flesh crawling and shifting, and then falling apart into a pile of black rats that raced away into the darkness. Rimmer made a shrill sound of disgust, kicking away any that got too close.

He ran back to Lister, who was hunched over trying to force himself to vomit. Rimmer took hold of his bare shoulders but he cried out and pulled away. Rimmer realised he still had the necklace in his hand, and quickly stuffed it into his pocket. “Sorry. Sorry.”   
Lister was rocking back and forth on his haunches with his hands over his face, a desperate keening sound coming from his throat. Rimmer didn’t know what to do. “Lister. Listy. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”  
“No,” he blurted tearfully, finally finding his voice. “No, it isn’t.”  
“What happened? Tell me what happened!”  
“He killed me,” Lister panted. “He killed me and fed me his blood. I’m his now. I’m changing. I can feel it inside me, man, everything’s changing. It hurts. Oh god, it _huuuurts_ …” Lister doubled over with a scream.  
“No,” Rimmer said desperately. “No, we can fix this! There has to be a way! There has to be something…!”

Lister threw himself down on his back in the crate, hissing and thrashing in agony. Rimmer tried to hold him down so he wouldn’t hurt himself. “Kryten! Cat! Help me!” Cat staggered out of the shadows and tottered unsteadily towards Kryten’s head to retrieve it. “Hurry, you stupid fur-brained bastard! He’s dying!”  
“You’re the stupid one, buddy,” Cat said heavily. “He’s already dead. I can smell it. Whatever that is in that box, it ain’t Lister anymore.”  
“Yes, it is!” Rimmer raged. “Vampire or not, it’s still Lister! And we have to help him! We have to!”

Lister’s body strained violently under his hands, his back arching up in a terrifying bow as he let out a long hellish screech like a banshee. Then he collapsed and fell silent, lying pale and still amongst the blood-soaked dirt and decomposing petals. No movement, no breath. Nothing. Rimmer stared down at him, numb. It was as if the universe had ended in that scream.

Cat limped over, still holding Kryten’s head. The three of them stood there in somber silence for what felt like eternity. “We were too late,” Kryten’s head sniffled, then let out a sob.  
“Sorry buddy,” Cat said hoarsely. “We tried.” Rimmer said nothing. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t function. “What happens now?” Cat whispered nervously. “What do we do with him? He’s like the other dude now, right? So what do we do when he wakes up?”

They had no time to decide. At that moment, Lister opened his eyes.


	24. Chapter 24

Lister sat up slowly. The world was...different. Everything was brighter, there were more colours, more smells. He stared down at his wrists. The hands were still caked in blood but both cuts were gone. He reached up tentatively to his throat. Smooth and unmarked. He felt decidedly weird.  
“Um, hi buddy?” Cat ventured nervously.  
“Hi,” Lister replied softly, distracted.  
“How ya feeling?”  
“I don’t know,” he said honestly.  
“Not...hungry at all?” Cat prodded gingerly.  
“No.”  
Cat looked to the others, “That’s reassuring, right?” he suggested with timid optimism.

“Lister,” Rimmer croaked, “are you...are you…?”  
“I’m different,” Lister confirmed. He felt strangely calm. “But still me...I think. For now. But it’s not over. Not yet.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“I think that was just the worst part. That was just dying. The change is still going on. I think it will take some time, but it’s happening. I can feel it.”  
“What do we do?” Rimmer begged. “How do we stop this?”  
“I don’t think we can. I think this is what I am now.”  
“A blood transfusion. We’ll give you another blood transfusion. We’ll pump it out of you.”  
“It’s too late for that.” 

Lister stood cautiously. His legs felt trembly but strong enough to hold him. He climbed out of the crate. “What did you do? How did you drive him off?”  
“Oh,” Rimmer looked down guiltily. He pulled out the necklace and held it up sheepishly for Lister to see.   
Lister cringed, turning his face away from it. “Oh,” he echoed, his voice shaking. His hand went automatically to his bloody bare neck. “You know, I can’t even remember the last time I wasn’t wearing that cross. It was my gran’s.”  
“I’m sorry,” Rimmer whispered. “I’m so sorry.”  
Lister shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now. Cat. Give it to Cat.”  
“Thanks bud!” Cat instantly snatched it out of Rimmer’s hand. “Is there anything else of yours I can have now you’re dead?”  
“Not yet. But put that on and, whatever you do, _keep_ it on.”  
“What if it doesn’t match my outfit?”  
“I don’t care. In a pinch, it might be the only thing that will save you.”  
“What about you, Sir?” Kryten’s head asked fretfully. “You heard what it said.”  
“Yeah,” Lister said flatly. “He’ll come back for me. But not tonight. He needs time to heal.”  
“Are you sure?” Rimmer fretted.  
“Yes,” Lister replied without hesitation. “I can feel him.”

“So what do we do in the meantime?” Cat asked.  
“Well,” Lister looked down at himself again. “I haven’t seen a mirror, but I’m going to hazard a guess that I could really use a shower. I look like Carrie on prom night.”  
“Can you still use mirrors?” Rimmer asked nervously.  
“Only one way to find out.”  
“I don’t imagine mirrors will pose an issue, Sir. That superstition stems from the old days when they were generally backed with silver.”  
“Thank god for that.” Cat failed to suppress a shudder. “A life without mirrors. Can you think of anything worse?” He looked around at his crewmates’ expressions. “What?”

  
Back in the sleeping quarters, Lister found himself watching the shower spray with fascination; the shape of the water droplets, how they caught and refracted the light. It was strange how something so familiar suddenly seemed so unfamiliar. But then, he felt that way about everything right now, including himself. His own body and senses had become alien to him in a way he couldn’t describe. It was like going to a fast food chain in a foreign country, where everything looked exactly the same as it did back home, but you couldn’t understand the menu; or getting in your car and finding all the instruments had suddenly changed and you didn’t know how to drive it; or one of those unnerving dreams where everything was just slightly _wrong_.

Pink swirls of blood blended with the water running down his body and around his feet as he cleaned himself off. He watched the patterns drift and dance. Despite the sense of disorientation, he still felt weirdly calm for someone who’d just been murdered. It didn’t feel real, although a lot of that was probably due to the whole ‘still walking around’ thing. Was this what it had been like for Rimmer, he wondered, waking up to find yourself dead but not gone? At least he still _had_ a body, even if it didn’t feel quite like it used to. But what was going to happen to it? Edward had said he would be young again, but he still looked the same. When he got angry, when he got hungry, was he going to become the kind of creature that Edward had turned into? Could he still die - properly and permanently - if the right blow was struck? Or, more importantly, if he _chose_ to? Or was he locked into an immortality he had never asked for?

Suddenly everything went dark. The room around him vanished as his mind was seized and transported elsewhere. He looked around himself, shocked and shaken. He was standing in Edward’s cellar back in Liverpool. There were no candles now, just a single dim bulb that barely lit the room. In the shadows of one corner there was a figure. Lister gasped sharply. It was him.

He saw himself as he was at twenty-four years old. He was lying naked on a thin dirty mattress on the ground. His wrists were shackled behind him, fastened to the cellar wall by a long chain, and he’d been securely gagged. There were angry bite-bruises all over his body. He couldn’t tell if he was unconscious or dead.

“Would you have preferred this?” Edward’s voice asked from behind him. He jumped and wheeled around. Edward, in his human form, raised a cynical eyebrow. “I could have kept you alive for a long time. For years. Imagine what that would have been like.”  
“You never would have got away with this,” Lister told him shakily.  
“Of course I would. How old do you think I am? How long do you think I’ve been doing this? You would have been just one more in a long line of sweet young things I collected over the centuries. Their bodies satisfied my appetites...and eventually they lined my nest.” Lister made a choked sound of visceral disgust. Now he understood why the coffins smelt that way; why that room on the _Demeter_ had smelt that way. The dead flowers weren’t causing the odour - they were masking it. “Like I told you, eventually everything turns to dust except us. Even bones.”

“No,” Lister said in desperation. “No, someone would have realised. Someone would have looked for me. I had a life. I had friends.”  
“How many of them looked for you when you _did_ disappear?” Edward asked. “Except for me? When I was trying to find you nobody seemed to know what had happened. You went missing one night in London, that was all anyone knew. They thought you’d turn up eventually.” Lister turned again to stare at his younger self, a sick feeling in his stomach. “It would have been so easy,” Edward told him. “Believe me, I should know. ‘Did you hear about Dave’s new job?’ And just like that-” he snapped his fingers, “-you would have been gone. Forgotten. Condemned to endless days in the darkness, your mind and body no longer your own, time blurring into one long haze of pain and confusion.” He felt Edward’s hands on his shoulders, his voice soft in his ear. “A pitiful existence finally ending in an even more pitiful death. I could have done it, Dave. Nobody could have stopped me, certainly not you. Would you have liked that better than the gift I’ve given you? Is that what you would have wanted?”  
“No. I never wanted any of this. I only ever wanted one thing from you,” Lister told him, his voice trembling.  
“And you’ll get it. That’s a promise.” Edward kissed the side of his neck gently. “We may have been deprived of the wedding night we deserved, but we have an eternity to make up for it.” Lister swallowed hard as a strong hand took his and lifted it, a thumb lightly stroking the ring-mark on his finger. “But I want you to remember what you saw here. I knew even then that you were worth more than this, but I can still do it if you try to defy me. And this time you won’t have the luxury of death to set you free.” Edward kissed his cheek gently. “I will come to you soon. Be ready for me. And for whatever I tell you to do.”

Lister’s eyes snapped open and he was back in the bright light of the bathroom, still standing under the shower. With one shaking hand, he reached to turn it off. He walked straight out into the quarters, where the other three were still sitting nervously around the table. They stopped talking and looked up at him warily. 

“I need you to do something for me,” Lister said quietly.  
“Find you some underwear?” Cat suggested, his eyebrows still sky-high.  
“I need you to put me somewhere where I can’t hurt any of you. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me: if I’m going to stay who I am, or if I’ll snap suddenly. But he’s a part of me now, and I don’t know how much control I’ll have if he tells me to do something. I couldn’t fight him earlier when he summoned me to the gardens, I’m sure as smeg not going to be able to do it now.”  
“What do you suggest, Sir?” Kryten asked.  
“Isn’t it obvious?” Lister replied. “Quarantine.”


	25. Chapter 25

“We should have thought of this before,” Rimmer said glumly. He and Lister were sitting together at the table in the quarantine suite. “Maybe you would have been safe in here.”  
“Maybe,” Lister gave a heavy shrug, and the sensation of his clothes moving against his skin threw him for a second, like he could feel every individual thread and fibre. “Maybe not. By the time we knew what we were dealing with, it was already too late.” 

Cat was safely sealed in the suite next to theirs. Kryten had headed to the library, taking the opportunity to do some research and see if he could find any helpful information. While Lister had been in the shower earlier, the three of them had discussed - in fearful hushed tones - their limited collective knowledge of vampire lore. 

“If my familiarity with the genre is accurate, conventional wisdom has it that in order to free someone from the vampire’s curse, you must destroy the head vampire,” Kryten offered.  
“How do we know that’s Edward?” Rimmer asked. “It could have been anyone.”  
“It’s hard to see who else it could be, given the circumstances, Sir.”  
“So if we kill the monster then Gerbil-Face goes back to normal?” Cat asked hopefully.  
“The lore varies, but it’s a possibility.”  
“Whether he does or not,” Rimmer said darkly, “we need to figure out how to kill that bastard. Until he’s dead, none of us are safe.”  
“And you know I hate to say it, but we may also need to know how to kill…” Cat gestured sheepishly towards the bathroom.  
“Sir!”  
“He said it himself, bud. He’s still him, _for now_. We don’t know what he’s going to be in a few hours or even in five minutes.”  
“We’ll think of something,” Rimmer snapped.  
“And if we don’t? I don’t like it anymore than you guys but, if it comes down to it, we need to be prepared to-” He fell silent as the bathroom door opened.

Looking at Lister over the table now, Rimmer recalled the conversation with a chill. Right now, the very idea of it all seemed ludicrous. Despite Lister’s own assertion that he had changed and was continuing to do so, and despite looking significantly more pale and sickly than usual, he still seemed so...normal. Obviously Edward could appear that way too when he chose, but it just hadn’t sunk in yet that Lister was really dead. Or undead.

“What happened down there?” Rimmer asked him timidly. “Before we found you?”  
Lister looked away, almost as if he was ashamed for some reason. “When I came round I was lying in the box. He’d slit my wrists. I tried to keep him talking but it was no use. He fed on me. And when he was finished...he cut my throat.”  
Rimmer turned green. “You were still awake?” he asked. “You remember it happening?”  
“Yes,” Lister replied quietly. “I remember. But I was so nearly dead by that point I barely felt anything. The next thing I knew, he was holding me. And my mouth was full of blood.”  
Rimmer’s shade of green intensified. “When all this is over you really are going to need that therapy with the medi-bot.”  
“I said I would do it if the thing didn’t kill me first. And it did.” Lister managed a small half smile.  
“How can you joke about this?”  
“It’s a valid reaction to trauma. Leave me alone.”

Rimmer was silent for a very long moment before saying, “Is that all he did to you?”  
Lister looked at him askance, “I’m sorry, was that not enough?”  
“Of course. I didn’t mean...Look, never mind.”  
“Why did you ask?”  
“It doesn’t matter.” Rimmer’s brain was bubbling with feverish curiosity like a boiling pot, but how to even ask the question?  
Lister looked at him knowingly, “Spit it out, man. I can tell something’s eating at you.”  
“I just thought...if he’s so fixated on you, and obviously has been for an insane length of time...then perhaps this was about more than blood.” Lister’s eyes quickly dropped from his. He seemed to be struggling to think of a response. “And the ring he put on you,” Rimmer added gingerly, “It was like a wedding ring.” He saw Lister bite nervously on his lower lip. “I suppose what I’m asking is...is he in love with you?”  
Lister scoffed bitterly. “No. I don’t think love is the right word. I don’t think even he would pretend it was. He sees me as a thing he’s entitled to, that’s all.”  
“In what sense?”  
“In every sense.”  
“Why?”  
“That’s...complicated. But basically, he thinks that me ending up in stasis was a sign of some sort. That this is my destiny.”  
“But back then he didn’t know any of that was going to happen, and he still wanted to turn you.”

Lister finally looked up again. He stared at him. “How do you know that?” he asked tensely.  
Rimmer gulped. He’d said too much. “Well, I guessed from what you told me earlier.”  
“How?”  
“I, er...um. Ah.” He gave up. “Oh, smeg it all. I looked.” He folded his arms defensively. “When we were in the medibay I looked at your memories to see what had happened. To see if you were right. It’s why you didn’t have your cross on when he took you: because you’d been in the mind scanner. And it’s how I knew it would keep him away down in the storage hold.”  
Lister glared at him, as eerily still as a cat about to pounce. “So what else did you see?”  
Rimmer squirmed, Lister’s memories replaying in his own head. _I know what you want. And I want it too._ “Everything,” he admitted.  
“Everything?”  
“Yes.” Rimmer met his gaze apologetically. “Everything.”

Lister held his gaze defiantly. “So what you’re really trying to ask me,” he said coolly, “is if _I’m_ in love with _him_. Right? You’re asking if I shagged the vampire?”  
“No, I know you didn’t. Then or now. But I also know what was going through your head when it all happened the first time and...”   
Lister studied the ring-mark on his finger self-consciously. “And?”  
“Listen, I’m not judging. I understand if he...enthralled you. That’s what vampires do, isn’t it?”  
Lister shrugged awkwardly, “That’s one way of putting it, I suppose. I can't deny he has a certain power over me.” _The kind of power that makes me want to fuck him even while he’s killing me_ , he thought bitterly, but didn’t say aloud.  
“I mean...you wouldn’t normally - you don’t usually-” Rimmer struggled to make words happen. “At least, I’ve never known you to - you’ve never mentioned…”  
Lister decided to put him out of his misery. “I don’t know how much of what I feel - or felt - for Edward is genuine,” he said shortly. “Not that it’s any of your business. He terrifies me, and I hate him for everything he’s done to me.”  
“But?” Rimmer challenged.  
Lister rolled his eyes. “ _But_. That’s all I’m saying.”

Rimmer shifted uncomfortably. This conversation was making him more edgy than he’d expected. He tried to change the subject. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have looked. I was just trying to help.”  
“I know,” Lister softened, also grateful for the change of topic. “And you did. If you hadn’t found out about the cross, neither of us would be sitting here now.”  
“But if I hadn’t taken it off…”  
“It wouldn’t have saved me,” Lister told him bluntly. “Not this time. He was prepared. He had gloves; it’s how he put the ring on me. Even if he hadn’t, I don’t think it would have stopped him. He couldn’t bite my neck in the garden, so he just bit me elsewhere. My time was up.”  
“It’s not up yet,” Rimmer insisted.  
“Even if we can defeat him, we don’t know what will happen to me.”  
“We’ll find ways to cope. We have blood supplies in stasis. Cat can give you tips on fang care.”  
Lister narrowed his eyes, “Just because _I_ can make jokes doesn’t mean _you_ can.”  
“It’s going to be fine,” Rimmer said stubbornly.

Lister took a deep breath. “I know none of us like the idea, but if I turn - _really_ turn - then you know what you guys have to do.”  
“Edward seems to have self-control, he wouldn’t have survived this long if he didn’t.”  
“The blood supplies aren’t endless, and I’m not Edward. I don’t know how long it took before he could control himself as well as he does, or if I’ll ever be capable of that.”  
“We’ll find out.”  
“Rimmer,” Lister’s voice was quiet but absolutely steely, “I don’t want to be a monster. Better dead than smeg, that’s what we say, right? If I turn, you have to take me out.”  
“What are you saying? You honestly expect us to...to _stake_ you or something?”  
“If that’s what it takes.”  
“You can’t be serious.”  
“We can’t afford to be squeamish about this,” Lister paused for just a second, “ _or_ sentimental,” he added more gently. “If turning me into a Listy kebab is the only way to save everyone, then you need to be ready to sharpen the skewers.”  
“No!”  
“This isn’t optional, man. We both know it. If I’m a danger - to _any_ of you - you have to do whatever it takes to protect the crew.”  
“There _is_ no crew without you!” Rimmer blurted out furiously. “Don’t you understand that? No crew, no posse. There’s _nothing_ without you. Just three idiots stuck together inside a giant trash can.”

He pushed back his chair and walked away, trying to calm himself. Neither of them spoke for a long time. Finally he heard Lister’s voice behind him. “Acting senior officer Arnold J Rimmer…”  
“Don’t.”  
“If the time comes, I expect you to do your duty. Not just to the Space Corps, not just to your crew. But to _me_. Is that clear?”  
“You can’t give me orders. I’m your superior.” Rimmer fought back tears. “And I am not going to discuss this any further.”


	26. Chapter 26

“Hold him down! Hold him down!” Rimmer watched with his heart in his throat as Kryten and Cat wrestled a snarling, thrashing Lister onto the medi-bed. His eyes were flashing red, his fangs bared angrily as he tried to fight them off. “Hurry, Sir!” Kryten urged. “We can’t hold him for long.”  
“Get on with it, Goal-post Head!”  
“I can’t. I can’t do it.”  
“You have to!”

Rimmer stood over him, raising one shaking arm. He was holding a sharpened stake. “I’m sorry,” he croaked. “Lister, I’m so sorry.” Lister growled like an angry dog, his jaws snapping in vain as he tried to reach something to bite. There was no humanity left in his face anymore, nothing sane behind those red eyes. Rimmer placed the point of the stake against his naked chest and raised the hammer.  
“Do it!” Kryten shouted.  
“Do it!” Cat shouted.

With a scream of anguish, he did. He brought the hammer down with all the hard-light strength he could muster, bursting the stake through flesh and bone to skewer Lister’s heart. He let out an unearthly screech, flailing in agony beneath his captors. Rimmer gave the stake another blow, impaling him all the way through. Lister projectile-vomited a spray of hot stinking blood. Rimmer felt some of it splash him, and tried not to think about it.

Dropping the hammer, he picked up a machete, and went to the top of the bed. Lister was weaker now, but not dead, still twitching and mewling. Kryten and Cat were still holding him tightly, not taking any chances. Rimmer lifted the blade, ready to cut off his head and end his suffering. “I’m sorry,” he said again, his voice breaking. He slashed downwards. As he did, Lister opened his eyes to look up at him pleadingly. “Rimmer!” And too late, Rimmer saw his eyes were brown and not red...

  
“No!” Rimmer jerked awake, still in the quarantine suite. He was shaking all over. “No,” he said again in a whisper, “I won’t do it.” He heard a fitful moan from the bunk above him that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He scrambled out of the bunk. “Lister?”

  
Lister stood in the cellar, face to face with Edward. “Why do you keep bringing me back here?” He tried not to look at the chained-up him still slumped in the corner.  
“This is our place, isn’t it?” Edward replied. “Where our story truly began.” He lifted both hands and ran his fingers through Lister’s hair, holding his head gently. “How are you feeling?”  
“Strange.” Lister admitted. “How long will it take? The change?”  
“Not very much longer.”  
“Will I still be me?”  
“It depends. Part of you will be. But there will be a side of you that you can’t control, especially at first. And, in essence, I will have control over every part of you.”  
“But not just yet.”  
“No, not just yet. But don’t underestimate the power I do have.”

Pain blasted through Lister’s head from Edward’s hands. He screamed and fell to his knees. “Quarantine,” Edward said, sounding darkly amused. “A smart move. In some respects, at least.”  
“Nothing gets in, nothing gets out,” Lister panted. “Not even you. Or me. Cat will be safe in there.”  
“For now perhaps. But you’re not. There is nowhere you’re safe from me anymore. And I warned you not to try and defy me.”  
“You won’t kill me. If I even _can_ still die. You’ve waited too long for this.”  
“You can still die. But no, I’m not going to kill you. But that doesn’t mean I won’t hurt you. There’s all kinds of things I can do to you. Your mind is mine to tinker with. I can make you feel whatever I want, see whatever I want. You asked me why I keep bringing you back here. What makes you so certain you ever left?”

In the blink of an eye, he was the Lister in chains on the floor. He gave a cry of fright that was stifled by the gag in his mouth. He struggled to get up, pulling desperately against the shackles but they held him fast. “It all seems a bit far-fetched, doesn’t it?” Edward pointed out. “A spaceship far far away. No work, no responsibilities. A friendly robot to do your cooking and cleaning. A human Cat? A little found family to love and protect you.” Edward leaned over and stroked his neck with gentle pity. “You know what that sounds like? An escapist fantasy dreamt up by someone losing touch with reality. Someone who’s forgotten what the world outside is like, because he’s spent so long in this cellar. Someone who’s so constantly woozy from blood loss, he doesn’t truly know what’s real anymore. Someone who realised long ago that no-one was going to save him, because there was no-one out there who cared. And he’s been going slowly insane in his chains ever since.” Edward smiled tightly. “Does that sound like you, Dave?”  
Lister couldn’t speak the words aloud, but he knew Edward could hear them. _I know this isn’t real._  
“At the moment you do, because I’m letting you. But I can change that if I want to. I can make it as if you never escaped this room. Or I could just leave you like this, chained up in your own mind for the rest of eternity, not knowing what’s happening to your body in reality. Or your friends. Until this becomes the only reality you remember.”

Lister glared at him. _They’re going to kill you. **We’re** going to kill you._  
“Has it occurred to you that if I die, so might you?”  
 _So be it. I will not live like this. I will not be your slave._  
“We’ll see, won’t we? It’s time for you to wake up now.” Edward bent over and kissed his forehead. “You’re getting hungry.”

  
Lister opened his eyes. Rimmer was shaking him. “Wake up. Lister, wake up. You’re having a nightmare.”  
Lister shook himself, stretching out and staring at his un-shackled hands with a grim expression. “I don’t think it was a dream.” He got out of bed and looked around. “Still nothing from Kryten?”  
“Not yet.”  
“I hope he’s okay. Maybe we should go and look for him.”  
“You’d know if Edward was back on the prowl, right?”  
“Yeah. He’s still recovering.”  
“So Kryten should be fine.”  
“I suppose so. But I’m starting to feel claustrophobic and Cat is safe next door.”  
“You want me to let you out?” Rimmer raised a wary eyebrow.   
“Why not? I’m still me for the time being and I could use a bite to eat.”  
“There’s some snacks in the cupboard.”

Lister went over and perused the selection. He felt like he was looking at soap. Nothing triggered an association with food in his brain. He opened a packet of crisps and sniffed it cautiously. His stomach turned, and his heart sank. “Nope.” He quickly tossed them back in the cupboard.  
Rimmer frowned unhappily. “You mean…?”  
“Yep,” Lister said through gritted teeth. “I think we’re going to have to make a trip to the blood bank.”  
“Wait until Kryten gets back.”  
“Okay, okay.” Lister leaned back against the wall, arms folded, and closed his eyes. 

Rimmer watched him nervously. Despite his apparently calm exterior, he could see the tension in Lister’s muscles. He found himself hoping that Kryten was not going to take much longer.


	27. Chapter 27

Rimmer examined Lister’s face from across the room. He looked healthier than he had earlier, less pale and shell-shocked. And now he was really studying him, he could see he looked...younger. Not drastically, but enough for someone who knew him well to see the difference; maybe ten years max. The face was a touch slimmer, there were fewer fine lines around his eyes, fewer grey hairs at his temples. Rimmer felt an uneasy chill go through him. “When you said a bite to eat…?” he enquired nervously.  
Lister opened one eye lazily and smirked. “Relax, Rimsy, it’s just an expression.”  
“Is it?”  
“Even if I was feeling fangy, you’re not much use to me. You’ve got no blood and your hard-light drive is too tough to chew. Trust me, man, your neck is safe.”

“Do you feel any different?” Rimmer asked guardedly.  
“Yeah. But not exactly ‘bad’ different.”   
“You _look_ different.”  
“How?”  
“Like you lost a decade somewhere over the last few hours.”  
“Really? Just a decade?”  
“You sound disappointed.”  
“He told me I’d be young again.”  
“Define ‘young’. Sixteen? Twenty? Thirty?”  
Lister raised an amused eyebrow, “Do you have a preference?”  
“What? No! Of course not. I’m just asking.” 

Rimmer squirmed slightly. Something about that look made him twitchy. “I feel like I should amend my projection. We’ve always aged at the same rate. Now we’re... unsynchronised.”  
“Awww. Am I making you feel old?”  
“It was meant to be for the benefit of your mental health.”  
“Given the events of the last few days, I’m not sure there’s much hope left for my mental health.”  
“You say that so cheerfully.”  
“Maybe I have gone nuts.” Lister sounded wistful. ”Maybe none of this is real.”  
“ _I’m_ real. I mean, y’know, as much as I can be.”  
“How do I know you were ever real?” Lister mused. “Perhaps he was right, and I never left the cellar; and Red Dwarf, the accident, everything that’s happened since is just a fantasy I dreamt up. A reality where I escaped.”  
“Somehow I doubt you would have fantasised me.”  
Lister smiled strangely, “Who knows?”

For some reason, a snippet of Lister’s memories suddenly flashed across Rimmer’s mind. - _Edward turned his hand over and kissed his palm. He watched, enthralled. His head was starting to spin with excitement, and he was starting to get hard. Soft lips pressed against the pulse of his inner wrist in a kiss that made him gasp_ \- He shook his head, trying to shake away the image.  
“What are you thinking about?” Lister asked.  
“Nothing.”  
“You just shivered.”  
“Someone walked over my grave. That’s all.”  
“I can sympathise.” Lister quipped.

Rimmer tried to change the subject. “What did you mean, ‘perhaps he was right?’ Right about what?”  
Lister’s expression darkened. He looked down at his feet. “Before he killed me, he told me something. That his original plan wasn’t to turn me, but to keep me alive as a prisoner. ‘To satisfy his urges’ is how he put it.” Rimmer felt his stomach clench strangely. “Now that I’ve changed, he’s always in my head. He can make me see things, feel things. Like what would have happened to me if he’d gone ahead with that plan.” Lister hugged himself. “He showed it to me. I saw myself back in that cellar, stripped naked and chained up like an animal. There were bites all over me. Everywhere.” Rimmer felt his throat tighten, his fingers curled into fists. “He even put me _inside_ that version of me so I could feel it, like it was all really happening.” Lister's voice shook. “He told me he could keep me there, and make me believe that that was reality and this was the dream.”  
“Well,” Rimmer’s voice wobbled slightly too as he contemplated the horror of it, “like I said, that doesn’t make sense. Why would you dream up me?”  
Lister tilted his head with a gentle smile, “Because I wanted someone to love me,” he said softly.

Rimmer went rigid. “What?!”  
“C’mon, man, don’t be so defensive. I know you do. You were almost in tears earlier when we talked about putting me down.”  
“Well, yes, but…”  
“And when you saw him on me in the gardens, you charged straight at him. You. A.J. Rimmer, the biggest coward who ever wore the wig.” 

Rimmer gulped. How could he explain? It wasn’t that he _loved_ Lister, he just couldn’t cope with the idea of losing him. Lister was like a part of him. Not just any old limb you could hack off and make do without, but a fundamental part. Lister was the thing that kept him feeling human. His conscience. His _soul_.

“It’s okay,” Lister said, and sauntered towards him. “Seriously, Rimmer, after all these years together, is it really such a shock to you that you might care about me?”  
“I’m...accustomed to you. That’s all.”  
“Oh, please. You love me. I know you do.” Lister’s smile dropped. “More than anyone I left back on Earth anyway. He was right about that at least. He could have taken me and nobody would have done anything.”  
“You don’t know that.”  
“Yes. I do. Because they _didn’t_. When I ended up on Mimas, I heard nothing. From any of them. They assumed I was fine, that I’d turn up. Even after everything that had happened - with Edward, with Shawna - they weren’t bothered. I vanished and no-one cared.” He looked up at Rimmer with pain in his eyes. “But I know you guys care.” He tentatively reached out and took Rimmer’s hand. “I know _you_ care. And maybe he’s right, maybe that’s the fantasy. Someone to fight for me. A hero to save me from the vampire’s clutches.” He moved closer to him, leaning against his chest. “Or just someone who’ll miss me, when I’m not me anymore. Or when I’m...gone.” He pushed himself up on tiptoe and kissed him shyly.

Rimmer froze solid. Lister’s lips were soft and warm on his, his body pressed against him, and it was the most incredible and terrifying thing he’d ever experienced. He didn’t know what to do. Did he want this? He’d never dared think clearly enough about it _to_ want it. It was _Lister_. Messy, pretty, annoying, big-hearted Lister; whose guitar-playing shredded his nerves, and whose brown eyes held the entire universe as Rimmer knew it. 

He felt Lister’s hands rest lightly on his shoulders. “Hold me,” he whispered.   
“Uh...”  
“Please, I need it right now. I know you want to. I know you’ve wanted to for so long. And I want you.”  
“Lister…”   
“All those shy little questions earlier about me and Edward. How did it make you feel when you looked in my mind and saw his lips on my skin? When you could feel me liking it, feel me wanting him?” Lister’s lips danced teasingly over his again. “Were you shocked? Angry? Jealous?... Turned on?”  
“I don’t know,” Rimmer said helplessly. His head was swimming.  
“When you saw me in his arms down there, helpless, half-naked and bloody, what did you feel?”  
“I wanted to kill him,” Rimmer admitted in a strained whisper.  
“He thinks the universe reserved me for him,” Lister whispered between kisses, “but I think maybe it reserved me for you.” Rimmer could feel his heart racing. He was starting to get an erection. This felt so good, but at the same time so unsettling. “We’ll kill him. We’ll kill him together, you and me, and then both live forever in blissful happiness. I’ll be young again, you can be whatever age you want, and we’ll make up for all that lost time. How does that sound?” Rimmer couldn’t even speak to reply. It sounded too good to be true. “Let’s go. Now.” Lister murmured against his mouth, those hands caressing him, touching him in ways he’d never been touched before. “We wasted our lives, let’s not waste our deaths. Open the door. Let’s find that smegging bastard and kill him. Hack him to pieces, burn what’s left, and then I’ll be free. I’ll be yours. Yours forever. Open. The. Door.” The voice became a growl that made Rimmer’s hair stand on end. He pulled back to look at Lister’s face. 

His eyes were glowing red. Not as strongly as Edward’s, but there were fiery embers beneath the brown, like a bonfire about to go up. It was beautiful and horrifying. Rimmer shoved him away, his heart plummeting into his stomach. “You’re not Lister!”  
“Of course I am,” Lister looked devastated. “Rimmer, it’s me. It’s still me.”  
“Your eyes. You’re...changing.”  
“I’m just hungry. Take me to the medibay. Let me eat something.”  
“No. No, I’m not letting you out of this room, miladdo.”  
“I’ll make it worth your while,” Lister licked his lips seductively. “Don’t worry, it’s safe. The fangs haven’t grown in yet. I won’t...bite.”  
“I think I’ll pass.”  
“I know you want me.”  
“Not like this,” Rimmer told him, trembling. “Not like this.”

Lister snarled suddenly, all pretence at charm gone. “Let me out!”  
“Not a chance.”  
“I have to go to him. He’s calling me. _I have to go_.” Lister threw himself violently at the door, making Rimmer jump in alarm. “Let me out! Let me out!” Lister pounded and clawed at the door like a wild thing. Rimmer saw smears of blood left where his fingers had started to bleed.   
“Stop! Stop!” He grabbed him from behind, using his hard-light strength to subdue him. “You’re hurting yourself!”  
Lister thrashed in his arms. “Open the door! Let me go to him!”  
“You don’t really want that. Trust me.”  
“You don’t understand. It’s killing me! If you don’t let me go to him, I’ll die!”  
“No, you won’t.”

Lister let out a scream of pain and frustration, writhing and kicking in Rimmer’s arms. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you, you bastard! I’ll kill all of you!”  
“This isn’t you. Lister, this is not you!”  
Lister twisted round, swiping at Rimmer’s eyes. Rimmer managed to grab hold of his arms and forced him backwards, pinning him down across the table by his wrists. Lister seethed and hissed and spat and cursed, trying to get free. “Let him go,” Rimmer growled. “I know you can hear me. I know it’s you doing this. He’s not leaving this room. Understand? If you want him, come up here and try and take him from me, you _coward_ , and we’ll see how far you get.”

Lister let out another furious howl as if in agony, then went limp beneath him. He was panting and sweating. Rimmer didn’t let go of his wrists. After a moment or two, Lister’s eyes opened and looked up at him. They were tearful and frightened; and they were brown. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I got hungry and I couldn’t control it. I couldn’t fight him.”  
“I know,” Rimmer said hoarsely. He still didn’t let go. They stared at each other for a long time without speaking. Finally, Rimmer cautiously released his wrists and straightened up. He looked away, trying to compose himself. Lister sat up nervously. “I’m sorry,” he whispered again.  
Rimmer forced a shrug, his teeth clenched. “It’s okay,” he said shortly. “It wasn’t you.”  
“But…”  
“I know it wasn’t _you_ ,” Rimmer repeated more sharply. “You don’t need to say anything.” Lister fell sheepishly silent. Rimmer turned away from him, squaring his shoulders and trying to pull himself together. “Where the smeg is Kryten?” he muttered.


	28. Chapter 28

Lister tucked himself tightly into the corner of the bottom bunk, legs hugged to his chest, his chin resting on his knees, and tried to centre himself. His stomach was growling and his head was spinning, and he still felt shaky and unsettled, but at least Edward had ceased his call and fallen silent - for now. He’d felt the pull as soon as Rimmer had woken him - _You need to feed, and I need to heal. Get out of that room and come to me. Come to me._ He’d tried his best to ignore it but, just like when Edward had drawn him to the garden, he had started to feel the pull like a physical sensation in his chest, becoming increasingly painful the more he resisted; like a limb being bent back or slowly pulled out of its socket, only feeling it with his entire body. He looked down at his left hand, which was still throbbing with pain, and saw that the ring-mark on his finger was misted with fine specks of blood. He bit his lip nervously. His husband was angry.

He risked a glance at Rimmer, who was sitting at the table, very deliberately not making eye contact with him in the awkward silence. Lister didn’t blame him. 

After what felt like forever, Kryten finally returned. When the door hummed open, Lister noticed Rimmer watching him tensely, but he made no attempt to escape. He was still starving, but he was back in control of himself now, and he knew it was useless either way; there was a double-doored entry/exit system in operation while containment mode was in force. The inner door wouldn’t open until the outer door was closed and vice versa.

“How are we doing in here, Sirs?” The maniacal cheerfulness of the greeting did not conceal the anxiety in Kryten’s voice as well as he’d hoped. One look at his companions was enough to answer his question. The tension in the air was as palpable as the electrical storm they’d just weathered. He carefully placed the box he was carrying on the table. “Is everything okay?”  
“I’m hungry,” Lister said after a heavy pause.  
“Oh dear,” Kryten’s mouth turned down. “I assume a nice biryani isn’t going to be sufficient to satisfy your needs?” Lister shook his head grimly. “I thought we might encounter this issue, although I’d hoped it would be later rather than sooner. Nonetheless,” he reached into the box, “it seemed prudent to be prepared.” He pulled out one of the blood canisters from the medibay. Lister tensed, immediately filled with an ambivalent mix of relief and disgust. He didn’t want it. But smeg, he _wanted_ it.

He slunk dejectedly out of the bunk and edged closer. “Thanks, Kryters. I was starting to get a touch ‘hangry’ there.” He tried to give Rimmer an apologetic look and got a scowl in return.  
“Just ‘a touch’?” Rimmer remarked bitterly.  
Kryten unscrewed the canister and tipped out the blood bag. “Hopefully the one helping should be sufficient. And I brought a couple of little somethings to try and make it more palatable.” He reached into the box again and drew out a bottle of Lister’s favourite hot sauce.   
Lister gave a snort of amused disbelief. “You brought me something to spice up the blood?”  
“Yes, Sir.” Kryten produced another item and held it up. “And a curly straw. I thought it might make the experience a little less depressing.”

Lister stared at the straw and suddenly a giggle burst out of him. And once it was out, he couldn’t stop. He doubled over, cackling hysterically, holding onto his stomach. “Oh my _god_.” He felt tears dripping down his face, as hilarity and horror clashed within him. He was a smegging vampire, and he had to drink gross revolting blood, but at least he could do it with hot sauce and a curly straw. “I can’t believe this is happening,” he hitched out, still laughing and crying at once. Rimmer watched him with pained concern, but didn’t move. Kryten stepped up to pat him gently on the back. “I know, Sir. I know.”

At last Lister straightened up, wiping his eyes. “Give it to me. Let’s get it over with.” Kryten handed him the bag and he popped it open and picked up the hot sauce. Rimmer made a gagging noise, “Oh my god, you _can’t_.”  
“Watch me.”  
“That’s disgusting.”  
“Hey.” Lister gave him a long mournful look, his dark eyes still wet. “Like I said...I’m still me.” Rimmer turned away. He couldn’t look at those eyes right now.

Lister shook an unhealthy dose of spice into the bag and then plopped the straw in defiantly. The hell with it. A classy aristocratic-type vampire he was not, and would never be. He was holding onto everything that was him, for as long as he still could. But when he raised the straw to his lips, he froze. “I can’t,” he said, his voice shaking.  
“Is it the wrong temperature, Sir? Would you like me to heat it up?”  
“No,” Lister’s stomach churned a little at the thought. “No, it’s not that. I just...I can’t. Not with you guys watching. I don’t want you to see this.”  
“None of this is your fault, Sir. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”  
“Yes,” Lister said heavily, “it is. So, I think I’m just going to take my spicy blood and my curly straw and do this in private. No offence.”  
“None taken,” Rimmer said, looking queasy. “That sounds good to me. Off you trot.” Lister disappeared sadly into the bathroom.

Kryten watched him go with an anxious expression. “What happened?” he asked Rimmer quietly.   
Rimmer squirmed. “He went...strange. Aggressive, angry. Trying to claw his way out.” He nodded to the blood smeared on the door that Kryten hadn’t yet noticed. “His eyes were changing colour.”  
“What did you do?”  
“I held him down until it wore off.”  
“Ah. So that’s why he’s in shame mode. His vampiric nature is beginning to assert itself.”  
“Yes,” Rimmer said dryly. “That would be it.” _That and the fact he kissed me and offered to suck something other than my blood_ , he thought to himself. He cleared his throat. “Did you find anything useful?”  
“Perhaps.” Kryten reached into the box again and drew out a handful of books on folklore, and also some assorted paperbacks. 

Rimmer picked one up and snorted derisively. “I don’t think _Dracula_ is a reliable source of information, Kryten.”  
“There is no reliable source of information on what we’re dealing with, Sir. That’s why we need all the information we can get our hands on.”  
“The _Twilight_ saga?” Rimmer pulled a face.  
“You never know where you might find a grain of truth hiding in fiction.”  
“Yes, but…”  
“If we can find common threads within all of these different versions of the vampire myth, they’re likely to be the most accurate; the things that stemmed from fact not fiction.”  
“Well,” Rimmer dropped the book back onto the table, “the sunlight thing is out. Lister saw Edward in the sunlight plenty of times and he didn’t turn into a human torch or a disco ball. Not that it would help us anyway - sunlight is in short supply on spaceships.”  
“Fire appears to be fairly reliable, so long as the creature is thoroughly cremated and the ashes scattered. And we already know that silver has some effect,” Kryten pointed out, “and perhaps crosses too.”  
“The garlic stuff is probably a dead end,” Rimmer mused glumly. “If that was an issue, no vampire would have ever gone within a mile radius of Lister. His blood is probably indistinguishable from vindaloo sauce.”  
“Of course, the classic method is probably the most reliable - if also the most challenging and dangerous. Stake through the heart and cut off the head.”

Rimmer recalled his dream with a cold shudder. “I was hoping we wouldn’t have to get that close.”  
“A bow and arrow of some sort might work.”  
“None of us are a good enough shot to guarantee a hit directly through the heart, especially with a moving target.”  
“Perhaps if we-” Kryten quickly stopped talking as Lister emerged from the bathroom. “Feeling better, Sir?”  
“Yeah. Thanks, man.” Lister tossed him the empty blood pouch.  
“You look better. In fact, you actually look…”  
“Younger. So I’m told.” Lister flicked a glance at Rimmer with a small ironic smile. “Apparently death becomes me.” Rimmer did not return the smile.  
“It’s good to focus on the positives,” Kryten said encouragingly, oblivious to the tension.  
“Hey, it’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Or the heart, for that matter.”  
“Ah, you overheard our little discussion,” Kryten was abashed. “We were merely discussing possible solutions to…”  
“To the problem,” Lister interrupted firmly. “But I’m part of the problem now. Rimmer and me, we’ve already talked about this.”

Rimmer put his hands up innocently under the force of Kryten’s death stare. “Don’t look at me like that! I told him it was out of the question.”  
“And I told _you_ we might not have a choice. I’m telling both of you.”  
“Oh, Sir, how can you even suggest such a thing???” Kryten wrung his hands in dismay.  
“You weren’t in here just now. You didn’t see me.”  
“I’m sure we can find ways to manage the situation.”  
“How? By keeping me locked in here for eternity? Feeding me blood snacks through a dispenser? Knocking together some silver restraints to keep me under control when I get too feisty? That’s no better than the life he would have subjected me to if things had gone differently, and it is not an existence I’m willing to accept. I would rather die.”

“We don’t know yet how this is going to go,” Rimmer said firmly. “You had a little… blip. That’s all.”  
“A little blip? Is that what we’re calling it?” Lister raised an eyebrow.   
Rimmer flushed. “Look, before we do anything, we need to kill Edward. Once he’s out of the picture, we can see what happens but, until then, that’s our priority. We just need to work out how.”  
“Well, I might just be able to help with that.” Lister pulled up a chair. “I’ve got an idea.”


	29. Chapter 29

“Are you sure about this, Sir?” Kryten asked fretfully.  
“I’m already dead,” Lister replied bluntly. “What have I got to lose?”  
“I don’t like this,” Rimmer said, pacing back and forth in front of him. “You said he could trap you. That he could imprison you in your mind.”  
“He’ll only do it as a last resort, it’s not what he really wants. He’s got bigger plans for me, and he didn’t wait three million years to give them up that easily.”  
“How do we know this is even gonna work?” Cat asked sceptically, watching from the safety of his own suite via vidscreen.  
“We don’t.” Lister said. “But it’s worth a try.”  
“You really think you can turn the tables on him and use the weird vampire mind meld to get inside his head?” Cat raised an unconvinced eyebrow.  
“Why not? A connection is a connection, right? Who says we can’t both use it?”  
“But you’ve been connected to him since that night in Liverpool, and in all that time you never felt anything until he wanted you to,” Rimmer pointed out.  
“I wasn’t a vampire then.” Lister shrugged. “I’m changing with every hour that passes. I’m feeling a lot of things - sensing a lot of things - that I never did before.” Their eyes met briefly and they both quickly looked away. “Look, the plan is simple. Edward must have a nest somewhere on board where he’ll be recuperating. I use my telepathic link with him to work out where he’s hidden himself, and you guys go and deal with him while he’s still weak.”   
“And what happens if this brilliant plan of yours all goes hideously wrong?” Rimmer scowled. Lister gave a humourless smile and yanked meaningfully at the handcuffs binding his wrists to each arm of the metal chair. His ankles had been cuffed to the chair legs. “Then between you guys and these, hopefully there’s only so much damage either me or Edward can do.”

Kryten drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the table. “If I may make a suggestion, Sir, are you familiar at all with the basics of hypnosis?”  
“No,” Lister looked amused. “But I know someone who is. Still a dab hand at the mesmer stare, Rimsy?” he teased.  
Rimmer glared at them both, “What’s your point, Kryten?”  
“The thought occurs that if _we_ are the ones controlling the trance-like state Mr Lister needs to enter in order to communicate with the beast, we may have a better chance of pulling him out if things go awry.”  
“So if I get in trouble, you snap your fingers and I wake up?”  
“In theory.”  
“It won’t hold him off for long. He’ll follow me into my waking mind.”  
“But it might give you enough time to pass on the info we need. And warn us if necessary.”  
“Okay. It’s not a bad idea, I suppose.” He looked up at Rimmer. “You game?”  
“I haven’t practised for years,” Rimmer squirmed. “And the purpose was... very different.” The idea of attempting his mesmer stare on Lister - sitting face-to-face and staring into his eyes after what had just happened between them - pulled his stomach into knots. He didn’t think he could handle that level of intimacy right now. Although Lister, annoyingly, didn’t seem bothered by the idea. But then _he_ had an excuse for what had happened. He had smegging vampiric immunity, the lucky bastard. Rimmer had no such get-out clause for why he’d allowed the little git to get so up close and personal, and the feelings of shame and confusion were still weighing on him like a lead overcoat.

“Just give it a try, Sir,” Kryten pressed. “We should make the most of any advantage we have.”  
“I don’t think…”  
“Get on with it, Goalpost Head. We might not have long before Bat-Face comes flapping around again.”  
“He hasn’t turned into a bat yet,” Rimmer stalled. “Just rats.”  
“Bats, rats, hats, schmatz. This _Cat_ is ready to go hunting. The sooner we find this jerk, the sooner we can kill him.”  
“If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. I can try again by myself,” Lister chipped in.

Rimmer’s stomach flip-flopped as he realised he had no way of getting out of this without revealing the reason for his reticence, and the thought of explaining did not fill him with glee. _I’m sorry, I can’t hypnotise Lister, because we made out less than an hour ago and it’s made things weird._ He didn’t imagine Lister was overly keen to broadcast the news either. It would be unfair on both of them to let this turn into ‘A Thing’ when Lister hadn’t been in control of himself and Rimmer had been... in shock. Yes, that was the most logical explanation. He’d been emotionally compromised by the events of the past few days, and the best option was to move on and pretend it had never happened. They all had enough to worry about, and things were crazy enough without opening a whole new can of worms. He was just going to have to shoulder the awkwardness and soldier on. “Urrrgghh! Fine.” He pulled up a chair more sharply than necessary and threw himself down into it. “But like I said, it’s been a hell of a long time since I last tried this. It probably won’t work.” 

Lister was watching him with the barest hint of a smile on his lips; a smile which Rimmer could not interpret. He took a deep breath and forced himself to focus. God, he did not want to do this. “Okay,” he said reluctantly. “Look into my eyes.”  
“Original.” Lister’s smile became more obvious.  
“Do you want to do this or not?” Rimmer snapped, his nerves fraying further by the second.  
“Okay, okay. I’m looking.” 

Their eyes locked. Rimmer swallowed hard, his throat becoming tight. It was hard to make words with those dark eyes fixed so intently on him. He tried to clear his throat. “Look into my eyes,” he repeated hoarsely. “Let your mind go completely blank. Focus only on me. You can only see me. You can only hear my voice.” The smile faded from Lister’s face, but Rimmer wasn’t sure if that was because this was working or because he was thoroughly unimpressed. “Imagine my eyes are whirlpools, spinning orbs of colour, pulling you down into their depths, pulling you down into my power, into the place between waking and sleeping. Your eyes are getting heavy. You are getting sleepy. Close your eyes and let it take you.” To his surprise, Lister’s eyes closed. He felt oddly relieved. It made this less awkward, less intense somehow. “Let your mind reach out in the darkness. Find Edward. My voice will anchor you, keep you safe.” Rimmer wished he could be more confident that the reassurance was true.

He found his eyes roaming Lister’s face. The transformation was happening so gradually, so subtly, but he thought he had de-aged even further since he’d fed. Was it just his imagination, or were his clothes a little looser, his skin a touch smoother? His gaze dropped down to Lister’s mouth, studying his lips. They looked soft and satiny… just like they had felt. With a feeling of mild panic, Rimmer quickly wrestled his attention back to the job at hand and refocused on Lister’s shuttered eyes. “When I snap my fingers, you will wake up. Do you understand?” There was no reply. Lister was breathing softly and steadily, and appeared unresponsive. “Lister? Lister?” Rimmer leaned forward nervously.   
“Did it work?” Cat asked loudly. Rimmer and Kryten shushed him.   
“Lister, can you still hear me?” Rimmer reached out a fearful hand, his heart thumping, and lightly touched Lister’s fingers. “Listy?”

Lister did not answer, or open his eyes, but at Rimmer’s touch he twitched violently and let out a sudden terrifying hiss like an angry rattlesnake. Rimmer jerked backwards and fell off his chair. The three of them stared at Lister in horrified silence for a few long seconds, before Cat piped up again. “Does that mean it worked?”


	30. Chapter 30

Lister closed his eyes and let his mind sink into the darkness. It was almost like swimming, diving down rather than pulling for the surface where he could still hear Rimmer’s voice. Entertaining though it was, he didn’t need Rimmer’s amateur mesmerism, but there was something comforting about holding onto that link, like a friendly voice at the other end of a phone far far away. 

He thought about the feeling of Edward’s voice in his head. Where had it been coming from? Where was he getting in? Lister spread himself out, searching, reaching into the corners of his mind. He could call, of course. He had little doubt Edward would reply, and maybe reveal the gateway in the process, but he wanted to do this stealthily if he could, without drawing attention to himself. And then he felt it. 

Heat. Not like fire, but like a fever. Like an infection. He pushed towards it and slowly the blackness began to turn red. It grew and grew as he moved closer, until it filled his world, this dark pulsing red light. It was uncomfortable, like an itchy sweater on a hot day, but he kept on moving forward, pushing his way through and then…

He was standing naked in waist-deep cool water. The sudden change sent a frisson of shock through him. He was bathing in a clear river, the sun warm on his upper body. He could feel silky weeds against his feet, rippling against his skin in the current. There wasn’t a single building in sight, not a house or a barn, just meadows and trees stretching into the distance. He caught a distorted glimpse of his reflection in the water and it sent another shock through him. It was Edward. _He_ was Edward. He’d done it. He had found a way in, and he was watching this memory from inside his head.

He watched as they climbed back onto the riverbank. There was a small bundle of clothes on the grass, little more than rags really. How long ago was this? There was nothing to help him pinpoint a specific time period. Edward dressed himself and walked through the long grass, back towards the tree line. The woods were darker, the thick summer canopy blocking out the sunlight. As he wound his way through the trees, a sound made him stop. A growl. He looked around nervously, searching for the source of the threat. There was nothing obvious. He bent down to pick up a large heavy rock, and kept walking, his pace quicker now. Suddenly something hit him from behind. He was on the ground, thrashing beneath a large rabid wolf that was tearing at him. Its eyes were glowing red. There was pain, and then everything went black. For a while, everything was darkness and delirium. He saw glimpses of the trees, but they were moving strangely, elongating and twisting. The world was changing.

When he woke up it was dark. And he was...different.

Lister gave a mental shudder. Fascinating though this was, he wasn’t here to explore Edward’s past. He needed to know where he was in the present. He refocused his energy and pushed through the memory, and out of it. He found himself in the middle of something like a red-tinted plasma ball. Scarlet tendrils of light crackled around him, disjointed images flickered in and out of life, appearing and vanishing in the same breath. He saw flames, distorted faces shrieking, a vision of the Acropolis in Athens that turned to ruins in the blink of an eye then vanished. He wondered again just how old Edward truly was, how much he had seen; how much he had _survived_. What chance did he have of fighting something that had endured for so long?

“None.” There was a flash of red light and he found himself back in the cellar, face-to-face with Edward. He froze as he realised he’d been caught. _Oh smeg._ However, Edward didn’t look angry. In fact, if anything, he looked proud. “I must admit I’m impressed. You’re not even completely changed yet and you were still able to penetrate my mind. I was right about you. You’re going to be strong.”

Lister looked around nervously. The other him wasn’t in this room, and things had been shifted around slightly. The place looked lighter, brighter and cleaner. The two coffins were back, standing in the centre of the room. “Why does it look different in here?”   
“Because we’re in my mind now, not yours.”  
“So?”  
“I don’t see this place the way you do. I don’t fear it.”  
“Okay. So let’s see if I can find a place you _do_ fear.” Lister lashed out with his mind and pushed his way back into the red room, but his words were a distraction; he was looking for clues as to Edward’s whereabouts, and he didn’t think he had long. Sure enough, within seconds, Edward wrenched him back to the cellar with a laugh. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, I’ll give you that. But if you’re here searching my memories for some kind of kryptonite, you’re wasting your time.” He moved without moving, and suddenly he was holding Lister tight in his arms. “It will almost be a pity when the change is complete and your mind surrenders to me. I’ll miss these endearing flares of defiance. They make you so interesting. Still, it’s not like there won’t be benefits to turning you into a docile little puppet.”  
“As long as there is any part of me that’s still me, I will never be your puppet.” Lister snarled.

Edward smiled indulgently, “You’re already more than halfway there, Dave. You know that when I call, you’re powerless to resist; and you can’t stay in that room forever. There’s only so much longer your annoyingly devoted hologramatic suitor can keep you contained and under control.”  
“He’ll do whatever he has to do to keep me away from you. Even if that means killing me.”  
“I doubt that very much. That’s the problem with love, it has limitations. If you’re counting on it to save you, you’ll be disappointed.” He reached up to caress Lister’s cheek, a mocking smile on his face. “Is that what you’re pinning your hopes on? For him to ‘save you from the vampire’s clutches’, as you put it?”  
“If anyone can do it, he can.”  
“You think he can defeat me?”  
“Yes. I do. He’s almost done it more than once already. You don’t know who he is. Who he _really_ is. Or who he can be.”  
“Interesting.” Edward stared down into his eyes, intrigued. “But also displeasing. You know, I allowed your adulterous behaviour earlier because I thought it might actually get you out of there, but that doesn’t mean I liked it.”  
Lister squirmed. “I wasn’t myself. You know that.”  
“Yes, I do. But I wasn’t pulling _all_ your strings, little puppet.”

Lister bit his lip, conflicted. Maybe it had been part of the transformation, or just his increasing desperation to feed and to answer his master’s call, but in those crazy moments before Kryten had returned, it had seemed like all his filters had disintegrated. He’d felt Rimmer staring at him, and when he’d stared back at Rimmer with his new eyes - with his new senses - it was like he was seeing him for the first time. Every pulse of his light-bee, every flicker of emotion that crossed his face, everything he was had suddenly come into sharp focus, like his projection had upped to super hi-def. He could almost see right through him. And what he’d seen had thrown every interaction they’d shared in the last thirty plus years into a whole different light; every look and word and touch. It was so obvious, he didn’t know how he’d never realised before. In that moment he’d been operating on pure instinct and those instincts had told him two things: that his relationship with Rimmer was more complex than he’d ever thought; and that he might just have found a way out of this room. The hunger had been getting stronger, like a nicotine craving dialled up to eleven, and Edward’s grip on him was intensifying, and yes, he’d wanted to get out, but he’d also been darkly intrigued by this new discovery. He’d wanted to see what would happen. Could he get Rimmer’s brittle exterior to crack? Could he get him to admit to his feelings? Could he actually _seduce_ him? The thought had excited him more than he’d imagined. 

‘I know it wasn’t you’, Rimmer had said. But that wasn’t true.

With Edward’s constant summons chanting in his brain and pulling at his soul, his stomach contracting with hunger, and the thrill of new desire coursing through him, he’d been almost out of his mind - but everything he’d said and done in those moments had come from him. All of it. When Rimmer had pushed him away, the hurt and frustration had been real. The desperation as he’d pounded at the door, the fury as he’d screamed and writhed in Rimmer’s arms, had all been his own. He had wanted the kisses. He had wanted to feed. He had wanted out of that room. He’d been frantic and in pain, and close to losing all control, but Edward was right. He hadn’t been possessed. 

“I can see you’re having some mixed emotions right now,” Edward said, his voice deceptively gentle. “That’s understandable. You’re going through a lot of changes. You’re adapting to a lot of new feelings and sensations. But they’ll pass soon enough. Whatever you feel for him - love, lust - it will all fade away once the transformation is complete. I will become the only thing in the world that matters. And won’t that be a relief?” He raised Lister’s hand and kissed the ring mark on his finger possessively.   
Lister pulled his hand back with a glare. “It’s not complete yet,” he growled.


	31. Chapter 31

Edward’s grip tightened and Lister felt a stinging pain as the ring-mark on his finger began to bleed in response to his act of rebelliousness. “Stubborn little thing, aren’t you? You know once I get you out of that damn room and into my arms for real, you’ll melt like butter. You can’t help yourself.” He bent down and kissed him. The room whirled around them, and suddenly they were lying together in one of the coffins. “After all, you can only fight so hard when there’s a part of you that wants to lose.” Edward pulled him close and kissed him again, and Lister was filled with warring feelings of fury and desire. 

“Give into it,” Edward whispered. “You want this. You want me. Just let yourself go. Stop holding back and let yourself feel all you can feel.” Lister tensed up anxiously. He knew what Edward meant. All of his senses had been heightened since he’d turned, every experience amplified. Those hot, intensely-charged kisses he’d shared with Rimmer had been intoxicating, even with the pain and confusion of everything else that was happening to him. But it was all so much. _Too_ much. He was still trying to cling to normality, afraid to fully indulge his vampiric senses. If he did, he might not come back from it.

“The pleasure, the excitement you felt when you threw yourself at that pitiful idiot earlier, that was just the tip of the iceberg. It was nothing compared to what I can give you. And if you think _this_ is good,” Edward ran a hand over his body and their clothes shimmered and disappeared, “...just imagine what sex is going to feel like.”  
Lister let out a breathless moan. Even though he knew this wasn’t real, just like when Edward had put him in the chains, it sure as smeg _felt_ real. He tried his best to stay focused and in control. “So,” he challenged, “when we finally do this for real, is this what you’re going to look like? Or am I going to find myself getting ravished by big scary Demon-Edward?”  
Edward gave him an evil smile. “When the time comes, you won’t care either way.”   
He began to kiss his way down Lister’s naked body. Lister thrilled at the luscious feeling of their limbs entwining. “Remember in the garden? You didn’t care what form I was in then. You were beautifully hard and ready to surrender right until your friend interrupted us.” Lister remembered with a shiver of combined horror and arousal. It was true. It didn’t matter what form Edward took; once he’d flipped that damn switch in Lister’s brain, he was helpless. Those lips were moving again, and before he knew it Edward’s head was nudging its way between his thighs, and all coherent thoughts evaporated.

  
“What’s happening?” Rimmer jumped up as Lister began to writhe, growling, in the chair. He appeared to still be deep in the trance, eyes still closed, but no longer peaceful. He was pulling at the restraints, squirming and contorting as if in pain.  
“Maybe it’s just to do with him changing,” Cat suggested nervously. “He said it was still happening.”  
Lister thrashed in the chair, causing several buttons to rip loose from the front of his shirt. Rimmer caught a glimpse of his bare chest and swallowed hard. The image of his dream haunted him, the vision of himself hammering a stake through that chest as Lister fought, much like he was doing now. He turned around, unable to look. “What do we do? Should I wake him up?”  
“He may calm himself in a moment,” Kryten said nervously. “It might be better to wait until he’s less…”  
“Vampy?” Rimmer suggested sarcastically. “What if Edward’s found him? What if he’s _hurting_ him?” He risked a glance back over his shoulder. Lister’s eyes opened briefly and seemed to meet his. They were bright red.

  
Edward raised his head with a soft gasp. “Oh, do you feel that?” he whispered. “You’re almost there, Dave. You’re so nearly mine.”  
Lister lay panting beneath him, his erection throbbing, his head whirling and all his nerves tingling. Yes, he could feel it, but he didn’t care. He just wanted more of this, even if it was only in his head. He became aware of a vibrant pulsing sensation, but not inside of him: it was inside Edward. “What is that?”  
“It’s you,” Edward cupped his face. “Or rather, it’s your life force.” Lister began to see it through Edward’s pale skin, as if his veins were made of light, all of them spreading out from a bright ball of energy in his chest. “I consumed your life and it’s mine now. And soon the rest of you will be too.”   
“No,” Lister struggled to sit up, silently cursing himself. All of this had been a diversion, a way to keep him distracted while he fell deeper into Edward’s power. “No, I’ll fight it. I’ll fight it for as long as I can.”  
“You can’t,” Edward kissed his forehead. “Just let go. Surrender to your instincts. Embrace your destiny.”

Lister closed his eyes. He could feel the mental tunnel he’d come down starting to dissolve. He was going to be trapped here, his mind imprisoned inside Edward’s. “No.” Everything started to blur. He was losing all sense of self as Edward’s thoughts and feelings began to overwhelm his own. He could feel the zing of a fresh kill still in his veins, the pain of the wound still throbbing in his chest, the scent of dust and dirt and flowers and grass, and a sick giddy feeling of glee and triumph as the final stage of his transformation drew ever closer.

“ _NO!_ ” With every ounce of physical and mental strength he had left, Lister threw Edward away from him, blasting the illusion of the cellar around them into red smithereens. Edward looked genuinely shocked for a second, then started to laugh. “I certainly was right about you. This is, without a doubt, your destiny. And, oh David, what a vampire, what a _force of nature_ you are going to be.”

_SNAP_. 

Lister’s head jerked up at the sound, and he heard the call of a familiar voice somewhere high above. _Lister. Lister, wake up._ He could see nothing but Edward in the darkness, he had no idea which way was out, but he could follow the sound of that voice. He let the sense of his physical form dissolve and lunged towards it, but Edward snared his essence, forcing him to take shape again.   
“Let me go!” Lister snarled.  
“Very well.” Edward leaned in close. “Run back to him then, while you still can. I’ll allow it. But I think once you get there, you’ll find there’s not much of you left to go back to. And remember, whichever way you run, whatever you do, you can’t escape me. You can’t escape _this_.” He kissed the ring-mark on Lister’s finger again pointedly. “Til death us do part, Dave.”

Lister snatched his hand away and fled, becoming nothing but thought once more, and pulling frantically for the safety and surface of his own mind. Or what was left of it.


	32. Chapter 32

“It’s not working. Why isn’t it working?!” Rimmer snapped his fingers again and again in front of Lister’s face.  
“Oh goodness. Perhaps this was a bad idea,” Kryten whimpered.  
“It was _your_ idea, you shambolic half burnt-out kitchen-aid!”  
“It was Mister Lister’s idea. I just thought we might be able to help.”  
“Great plan. Brilliant plan. We don’t know what’s going on in there. We don’t even know if he’s still Lister. We never should have-”

Lister’s eyes snapped open and Rimmer stared at them apprehensively. They weren’t glowing red anymore but - like he’d seen before - the embers of a terrible fire were burning out a warning signal from his eye sockets. “Lister?”  
“The gardens,” he rasped out. There was a strange new timbre to his voice, a sinister hiss that ran beneath every word. “He’s in the gardens.”  
“You’re sure?”  
“I smelt the flowers.”  
“The guy always smells like dead flowers,” Cat interrupted impatiently from his screen.  
“These were fresh, alive. He’s made a nest under the bower, where you found us before. He crawled out of there when I first found him. Get down there. Burn it.”  
“Are you okay?” Rimmer demanded, still unnerved. “What happened? You looked like you were in pain.”

Lister laughed loudly, and the sound twisted and warped into a terrifying cackle that was distinctly non-human. His eyes flared red for a second then dimmed again. “Never did have much experience with pleasures of the flesh, did you, Rimsy?”  
Rimmer tensed, his hair standing on end. He didn’t know what was worse: the thought of Lister cavorting with Edward in some kind of sick erotic fever-dream, or the horror of seeing Lister’s humanity slipping away before his eyes. It was like his personality was dissolving as they watched.

Lister stared at him intently, still writhing restlessly in his restraints. He was making a strange purring sound. “Poor thing. You never really lived before you died. Let me out of these cuffs and I’ll show you what you were missing. I’ll show you what fucking is _supposed_ to feel like.”  
Rimmer went red, then white. “Thanks but no thanks.”  
“Come on, don’t be shy. It’ll be fun. It’ll feel so gooooood.”  
“Oh man,” Cat said grimly. “He’s really not in there anymore, huh?”  
“We can’t be sure,” Rimmer protested, his voice shaking.  
“He said the F-word,” Kryten protested, distressed. “Mr Lister _never_ uses the F-word.”  
Rimmer, who had heard Lister use the F-word both extensively and creatively any number of times, tried to keep a grip on his frustration and temper. “I wouldn’t call that conclusive.”  
“If he’s trying to seduce you, Goal-post Head, I think we can be pretty sure there’s nothing of Lister left in there.”  
Rimmer stared at those flickering bonfire eyes and felt pain spread through his chest. “I suppose you’re right,” he said hoarsely.

He turned to Kryten, who was still staring at Lister in horror. He looked as devastated as Rimmer felt. “Go and let Cat out from next door. We’ll pick up some tools and head to the botanical gardens. Let’s finish this.”  
“Yes, Sir.” Kryten left, his head bowed in sorrow.  
Rimmer turned back to look at Lister. “We’re going to leave you here while we go and deal with Edward. I just hope and pray that when we come back, you’ll be you again.”  
“Who says I’m not?” Lister challenged with a haunting smile. “Just because I’m different now, doesn’t mean I’m not me.”  
“I wish I could believe that.”  
“Then let me prove it to you. Let them go and you stay with me,” Lister whispered invitingly. “You can take over where Edward left off. We weren’t quite done and I still want more.”  
“I bet you do. But you’re not getting it from me.”  
“Why not? I know you want to. Stay here, take me to bed. Make love to me.”  
Rimmer felt himself seized with a kind of sick tension; both disturbed and rattled by the words. His stomach was full of butterflies suddenly. “Stop it. This isn’t going to work.”  
“I can feel your desire burning for me. I can see you undressing me with your eyes, staring at my body. You’re _hungry_ for me.” Lister raised a coy eyebrow. “Is this the age you liked me best?”

Rimmer gulped. There was no doubting anymore that Lister looked significantly younger now. If he’d had to guess, he’d have put him at somewhere in his thirties. And it was so hard not to stare, not to be fascinated - maybe even a little mesmerised - at this memory come to life in front of him. It wasn’t desire, he told himself; just the rose-tinted spectacles of nostalgia at seeing his companion of thirty years in his prime once more. But...he found himself thinking again of those insane moments earlier when Lister had been pressed against him, those soft lips on his, the whispered words of devotion. It had felt good...but it had all been a trick. It was all tricksy vampire wiles, it hadn’t been real.

“Or,” Lister purred, “are you waiting for me to get even younger? Like I was when we first met? Is that how you see me in your dreams, in your fantasies, when you touch yourself at night?”  
“Shut up.”  
“We might not have long left. This could be your last chance. It would be a real shame if you didn’t get to _impale_ me before you have to impale me, right?” Rimmer visibly flinched at the words. “Come on. You don’t even have to take the cuffs off. You can leave me like this and do whatever you want to me. You know I can’t hurt you anyway. Just let this happen. I want to be with you just once before I’m gone. Hold me. Love me. Kiss me. Kisssss me….”

Something inside Rimmer broke, and he smacked him across the face, hard. They both gasped out loud; Rimmer in shock and Lister in pain. There was stunned silence for a second. “You’re not Lister.” Rimmer said eventually through gritted teeth. “You’re a monster. You’re a thing wearing his face. And I’m not letting you do this to him _or_ me. Understand?”  
“Sir?” Kryten appeared in the doorway. “Are you ready?”  
Rimmer took a deep breath to calm himself and backed away. “Yes. Let’s go.”  
He turned to walk away, still trembling, and heard Lister’s voice behind him. It was quiet and shaken, and that disturbing demonic hiss still reverberated beneath the surface, but it made him stop in his tracks. “See ya, Smeghead.”

Rimmer froze and turned to stare at him, white-faced. “What did you say?”  
Lister stared back at him, his eyes still aflame, and Rimmer saw a single blood-stained tear trickle down his cheek. “I’m saying goodbye. I’ll be gone when you get back.”  
“You’re not going anywhere.”  
“I’ll be here, but I’ll be gone. Understand? It’s nearly finished. The darkness is closing in.” Rimmer watched in silent turmoil as Lister tossed his head violently, as if trying to shake something away. He made that awful rattlesnake hiss again, straining at his bonds. “He’s waiting for me down there. I can’t fight it anymore. I can’t ...hold...on…”

Rimmer fought back tears of his own. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to kill him, I promise you. And then this will all be over.”   
Lister gave another chillingly monstrous cackle. “One way or another, right?”  
“Lister…”  
“Go. Do what needs to be done. But remember what I said. _I expect you to do your duty_.” His eyes flashed red again and he started to laugh hysterically. The sound of it was horrific. “If you think you can. Can you do that... _Ace_?”  
Kryten looked nervously at Rimmer, “What duty? What does that mean?”  
Rimmer’s jaw clenched tight in determination. “It means we need to go kill a vampire.”


	33. Chapter 33

The three of them got kitted out and took the lift to the botanical gardens. They’d ditched the bazookoids this time, and instead found everything they needed in the JMC Survival Stores; machetes and flamethrowers that would have ordinarily been used for clearing thick foliage, and sharp metal stakes and heavy mallets for setting up tents and shelters.   
“Don’t the stakes need to be wooden?” Rimmer worried. “In the movies they’re always wooden.”  
“You think the vamp’s going to care?” Cat retorted. “You think he’s going to find a tent peg skewering his chest and he’s gonna complain we’re not upholding tradition?”  
“It’s not about tradition. It’s about whether or not it works, and we need this to work!” Rimmer snapped angrily.  
“Most of the literature I’ve reviewed has been non-specific, Sir,” Kryten said soothingly. “I would imagine so long as the stake penetrates the heart then what it's made of is irrelevant.”

“Remind me again,” Cat frowned, “which side is the heart?”  
“Left, Sir.”  
“ _His_ left,” Rimmer stressed.  
“What?”  
“His left, not your left.”  
“There’s a difference?”  
“Oh God. Forget it,” Rimmer groaned. “Just leave the staking bit to me.”  
“The job’s all yours, buddy.”

As they entered the gardens, Cat sniffed the air cautiously. “I’m not sure about this.”  
“Lister was certain.”  
“You really think we can still trust him? You saw the state he was in, what he’s turning into. How do we know that wasn’t Fang-Face talking? How do we know he hasn’t sent us down here on a wild goose chase, or worse?”  
“We don’t. We just have to have faith. He’s changing, but there’s a part of Lister still in there, I know it.”  
“How?”  
“I can’t explain,” Rimmer said irritably, “I just know. I can see it in his eyes still. I can feel it.”  
“You know what ‘wishful thinking’ is?” Cat remarked dryly.  
“You know what ‘neutering’ is?” Rimmer sniped back.  
“Sirs, stop squabbling. We need to focus. Besides, for what it’s worth, I believe for once Mr Rimmer may be right.”  
“What do you mean, ‘for once’?”  
“Mr Lister’s condition is highly unstable, but he does still appear to have brief flashes of control and lucidity. I think his tip about the nest being here was genuine.”  
“So do I. And I know exactly where it is.” Rimmer tightened his grip on the machete in his hand. “Follow me.”

He led them back to the den where he’d found Edward feeding on Lister. With the lights now on, he could see splashes of dried blood still staining the grass, and noticed something he hadn’t seen before. In the ring of giant rhododendron bushes enclosing the clearing, one of them was very obviously dying. Its blooms had all withered, the leaves yellowed. Rimmer pointed meaningfully and Cat nodded emphatically and tapped his nose. _I can smell it._

Kryten and Cat set their flamethrowers to max and unleashed powerful jets of fire at the base of the bush. The dry dead leaves and branches went up like a torch. Rimmer lifted his machete with a shaking arm and a weak bladder, hoping very fervently that the fire would do the trick, and he was not going to have to do battle with an angry flaming vampire.

  
In the quarantine suite, Lister - still cuffed to the chair - pulled feverishly at his restraints. His head was lolling restlessly from side to side. Beads of blood-tinged sweat dotted his forehead. He was feeling hungry again but, even worse than that, he could feel his self-control slipping away. It was like the slow slide into drunkenness, or the moment when a high started to kick in. That sense of the world shifting, of your body being not quite obedient anymore, only stranger and more frightening. There was a darkness creeping over him, like the shadow of the moon over the sun during an eclipse, edging slowly towards totality. Just as he’d felt earlier when he’d thrown himself at Rimmer, his inhibitions were dissolving and instinct and impulse were taking over. He was rapidly losing the strength and presence of mind to fight his urges, to hold back from saying or doing whatever he felt.

Edward’s voice bubbled up inside his mind. _-You betrayed me. You told them about my nest.  
-Yeah. And I’m not sorry.  
-You will be.  
-Spin on it.  
-Still so defiant, even now?  
\- To the very end, you bastard.  
\- It’s not far off now. You can feel it, can’t you? The hunger grows.  
-Yes. I can feel it. And I can fight it.  
\- Not for much longer, my pet. Not for much longer. Your human self is fading. It’s time to let go. Come to me.   
\- I can’t.  
\- Come. To. Me._

Lister felt the command seize hold of him, sinking into his muscles, dragging at his heart. He thrashed in the chair, fighting to free himself, but the cuffs held fast. He let out a long deep cry of pain, frustration and fury. And fear. What would happen when the combined demands of his new instincts and his new husband finally overwhelmed him? Would his mind and body snap under the pressure? And if they did, would he ever recover? Would he ever truly be himself again?   
\- _Come to me…._

  
“He’s not here.” Cat sifted gingerly through the remains of the dry scorched earth with one foot, a scowl of frustration on his face.  
“You’re sure?”  
“There’s nothing here but a pile of dirt and ashes. Unless he completely went up in smoke, bones and all, he’s gone.”  
“You could smell him. You said so.”  
“I could, but it must have just been the strong smell of the nest.”  
“Smeg.” Rimmer closed his eyes. “He knew we were coming. He must have read Lister’s mind and done a runner. _Smeg_.”  
“So now what?” Cat asked.  
“I don’t know. He could be anywhere on the ship by now.”  
“The loss of his nest will be a blow.” Kryten tried to remain optimistic. “He’s still wounded and now he has nowhere to recuperate.”  
“He might go back to the nest he made in the storage hold for Lister?” Rimmer suggested.  
“Unlikely. He knows we know about it. It’s not secure.”

Rimmer let out a growl of frustration and hurled his machete at a nearby tree. The blade lodged in the trunk, the handle quivering. Cat and Kryten shared a nervous look. “I promised him.” Rimmer said, his voice breaking. “I promised we were going to fix this.”  
“We still can,” Kryten insisted.  
“You saw him. We’re running out of time.”  
“We don’t know how this works, Sir. How _any_ of this works. It may not be too late.”  
Rimmer heard Lister’s straining voice in his memory. _I can’t... hold... on._ He squeezed his eyes shut. He’d failed him. As usual, he’d buggered everything up.

Kryten went on, “We need to track the beast down somehow… and I think there’s only one way left for us to do it. And although I admit I’m not thrilled by the idea, it may be our only hope.”  
“What is it?” Rimmer opened one eye again suspiciously.  
“We let Mr Lister find him.”  
“ _What?_ ” Rimmer opened both eyes, glowering.  
“Given the psychic connection they have, he should be able to lead us straight to him.”  
“That doesn’t mean he will. Edward’s control over him is getting stronger. And even if he does, the slimy git will still have forewarning, just like he did here.”  
“Maybe Mr Lister doesn’t need to know.”  
“What are you suggesting?”  
“We release him from quarantine and see where he goes. Considering what we’ve witnessed thus far, I think it’s safe to assume he’ll either be summoned against his will or seek out his maker of his own volition. We just have to follow him.”  
“No.” Rimmer shook his head. “Absolutely not. Not a chance. I don’t want that disgusting pervy corpse within a mile of Lister.”  
“None of us do, Sir, but how else are we going to find him?”  
“Cat…?”  
“I can’t track him, bud. The smoke’s clouding everything.”

Rimmer was torn. On the one hand, if Edward finally got Lister in his clutches, who knew _what_ would happen? The idea of it gave Rimmer chills, in more ways than one.

But on the other hand, Kryten had a point. The ship was the size of a city. Edward could give them the run-around almost indefinitely if he chose, and Rimmer had seen what had happened earlier when Lister had been prevented from answering his master’s summons. Edward had backed off before, but he might not give up a second time. What would happen to Lister then? Would he end up beating himself to a bloody pulp against the quarantine doors?

“Let’s go back,” he said heavily. “We’ll talk to Lister - if we still can. See if there’s some way around this. Maybe he can come up with something.” He turned and headed back towards the lift, shoulders slumped despondently, but after a few steps he turned around and came back. “Sorry, just one moment,” he glanced up sheepishly as he slunk past and went to retrieve his machete from the tree. It took him a full minute to pull it back out again. “Sorry. I...uh… I might still need this. Sorry.”

  
Lister screamed, pulling against the handcuffs on his wrists and ankles with all his might. The metal had cut deep into his flesh, almost down to the bone. Drops of blood dripped from the wounds and spotted the floor around the chair. The muscles stood out on his neck as he strained.   
- _Break the chains. You can do it._  
“I can’t!” He screeched through gritted teeth  
- _Yes, you can. You’re strong. Do it._  
“It hurts! Please stop! Let me go!”  
- _Don’t just use your body, use your mind. Focus your energy. Use all your power._

Lister gasped for air, exhausted and giddy with pain. He had to get out of this chair. He had to get out of this room. Every second he was separated from Edward felt like drowning. He was being pulled apart from his very centre like he was being stretched on a rack. All his sorrow and despair and even his fear had evaporated away. He had been reduced to a thing made of pain and need. _Come to me. Come to me. Come to me._

He was on the brink of breaking, his mind on the edge of shattering into insanity, when the eclipse reached totality. It wasn’t as awful or dramatic as he’d feared it would be. It was actually almost a relief. The shadow covered his soul, swallowed up and smothered his old self, extinguishing all the emotions that still tied him to his life. Darkness engulfed him, cool and soothing, but a glimmer of diamond-bright inner light still remained, burning like a halo around his edges, all the more intense for the contrast. He was a supernova with a black hole at its centre. His eyes glowed like lava. With a snarl too deep and primal for any human to make, he tore at his restraints.

Blood splattered across the floor and viewing glass. And the empty chair toppled backwards onto the floor.


	34. Chapter 34

They returned to the quarantine suite in edgy silence, each of them wrestling with their own thoughts and fears about what they were going to find waiting for them. They didn’t have to wonder for long. 

As they drew nearer to Lister’s cell, a metal chair smashed violently against the viewing window, making them all leap in shock. The glass didn’t crack, but the force it had been thrown with was palpable, and still enough to be frightening. “Oh smeg,” Rimmer croaked.  
“How did he get loose?” Cat whispered fearfully.  
Rimmer remembered the destroyed door in the medi-bay with a sinking heart. “It looks like the handcuffs weren’t enough.”  
“Mr Cat, might I suggest you return to the suite next door?” Kryten suggested nervously. “Quickly?”  
“He can’t get out,” Rimmer said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. “Can he?”  
“Perhaps not. But we still need to go in.”  
Cat gave Kryten a hearty slap on the shoulder. “You’re right, I’m gonna sit this one out. It was great knowing you guys. Well,” he wrinkled his nose, “not _that_ great.”  
“Just go.” Rimmer scowled.

Once Cat was safely sealed away, Rimmer and Kryten stood side by side at the door to Lister’s suite. “Here goes.” Kryten said, and hit the door release. They both tensed, unsure if the interior door had held up against Lister’s fury, but the coast was clear. They stepped into the antechamber, sealed the outer door, and triggered the inner mechanism. “You managed to restrain him and calm him down last time,” Kryten piped up in a small hopeful voice. “Maybe once he sees us he’ll be more…”

A snarling figure launched itself at them, moving so fast it was a blur. They both screamed instinctively, staggering backwards, but Lister wasn’t interested in them. He was pounding savagely at the door with incoherent shrieks of fury. Once he'd unfrozen from the shock, Rimmer darted forward and grabbed him around the waist from behind, lifting him off his feet and dragging him back into the main room. “Kryten, shut the door! _Shut the door!_ ”  
  
Lister kicked and thrashed wildly, still screeching. “Get off me! Get off me!” He flailed violently in Rimmer’s arms. Rimmer tried his best to hang on while the door slid slowly into place, but it was like trying to hold onto an eel. He noticed suddenly that Lister’s legs were bare, that he was dressed only in a baggy oversized shirt and boxers. His leather trousers were crumpled on the floor by the upturned chair. For a moment he didn’t understand why, but then he registered just how small the waist he was currently gripping in a bear-hug actually was. Lister might be strong as an ox, but he was slighter now than he’d been in decades. The trousers had obviously fallen down and been discarded, and his shirt was hanging off him as well.

“What do we do?” Kryten asked desperately, staring at Lister in despair.   
“How should I know?” Rimmer yelled back. Once the door had finally sealed shut, he dropped Lister unceremoniously to the floor. He bounced back up and lunged at him viciously. “Argh!” Rimmer managed to grab onto his wrists and hold him back, but his grip was unreliable; Lister’s wrists were slick with blood from where he’d burst open the handcuffs. Now they were face-to-face, he could see the red-hot glow of his eyes. His mouth opened in an angry hiss, exposing two tiny pearly-white fangs. Rimmer’s heart plummeted into his stomach. “Oh my god.”  
“Mister Lister, stop!” Kryten pleaded, “We’re trying to help you!”  
“Him?! Help _me!_ ” Rimmer bellowed, still struggling to keep Lister at bay.  
“But I can’t harm humans!”  
“He’s not human anymore! He’s got fangs for god’s sake!”

Lister leapt up, snapping at Rimmer’s face, and they both fell to the floor. Rimmer quickly rolled and managed to pin Lister beneath him. Lister snarled, quivering with rage. “Bastard! Bastard!” The words were almost barked. There was something disturbingly bestial about his whole bearing.  
“Look, just calm down, will you?” Rimmer snapped. It was taking all his strength to keep Lister’s wrists held to the floor. He hissed angrily beneath him, fangs bared. Rimmer was reminded horribly of his dream; of the monster-Lister he’d been forced to stake. “I know you’re still in there,” he said desperately. “I know Dave Lister is still in there somewhere. Just talk to me.”  
“Fuck you!”  
“Lister, please.” Rimmer persisted, “What do we do? Tell us how to help you.”  
“Let me out! Let me go to him! Let me feed!”  
“We can’t do that.”   
Lister screamed in rage. The noise was somewhere between a shriek and a roar, and it was terrible. “Let me out! Fucking bastards! I’ll tear you to shreds!”  
“Stop!” Rimmer shouted. “This is Edward talking, not you.”

Lister threw his head back and cackled horribly. “You don’t know me! You _never_ knew me!”  
“That’s not true.” Even though he still couldn’t bring himself to believe it was Lister speaking, Rimmer still felt oddly offended.  
“You don’t even know yourself! Stupid! Stupid scared little fool! You know what you could have been. You know what _we_ could have been, if you hadn’t been such a coward.”  
“What do you mean?” Rimmer was shaking.  
“Do you think Edward was the first?” Lister taunted, his eyes blazing. “Do you think he was the _last?_ There were others, so many others you never even knew about, and you could have been one of them, but you were always too afraid.”  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
“Liar!” Lister snarled. “All those years we lived side by side, slept inches apart, and all that time you watched me, and wanted me, and did nothing! Frightened of yourself and of what you wanted! You’re pathetic!” The words hit Rimmer like a punch to the stomach. 

“He’s calling. Let me go to him,” Lister hissed. He started to writhe disturbingly, as if the very thought of it was thrilling. “Let me be with someone who’s not afraid. I want it. I want everything he can give me. Everything you never could.”  
“He doesn’t love you,” Rimmer heard his voice shaking. “Remember? You said so yourself.”  
Lister laughed again. “Love? _Love?_ What does that even mean? Where did love ever get me?” He tried to lunge upwards, snapping to bite, but Rimmer wrestled him down again. “I don’t want love,” Lister growled. “I want blood. And sex. And _this_. This feeling, this power. And him. Now _let me go._ ”

Rimmer felt a rage and hopelessness he’d never felt before consuming him. He looked down into Lister’s face, the face he knew so intimately, and saw how drastically it had changed. And not just the face: the body, the voice, the cruel words. This wasn’t Lister anymore. Not really. But he couldn’t let go. He couldn’t. 

“No.” The word came out like a scream, gurgling in his throat. “No, I won’t do it. Because you’re mine. Understand? From the day you stepped foot on this ship, you were mine. _My_ assistant. _My_ roommate. _My_ responsibility. Thirty years - _more_ than thirty years - we’ve been together, through thick and thin. And I will not let him take you from me! I will not!”  
“He already has.” Lister glared up at him with red-eyed disdain. “In every way that matters. And there’s nothing you can do. _Nothing_.”  
“I can still kill him.”  
“And me? Are you going to kill me too, Rimsy, if you can’t have me?” Lister mewled, fixing him with a mockingly sad, mournful look. “Cut off my head and drive a stake through my heart while I scream and beg you for mercy?” Rimmer gritted his teeth and didn’t reply. Lister smiled bitterly. “I didn’t think so. Edward was right. Love has too many limitations.” 

He whipped his head round suddenly and bit Rimmer’s forearm. “Ow! Son of a -”. Rimmer jerked backwards in pain. The bite didn’t break the skin of his hard-light form, but it hurt. Lister threw him backwards and, in the blink of an eye, he was on his feet and lunging at Kryten, moving almost too fast to see.  
“Now, Sir, be reasonable,” he sputtered as Lister bore down on him. “You know you can’t feed on me. Perhaps if I nip back to the medi-bay, I can bring you a nice tasty blood snack and you’ll feel much better.” His words fell on deaf ears. Rimmer staggered to his feet, but it was already too late. Lister had torn Kryten’s arm off and used his palm to activate the exit. 

Lister darted through into the antechamber and Rimmer dived after him. “No!” The two of them fought and wrestled, hard-light strength battling vampiric strength, as the inner door began to ease shut and Rimmer tried to drag Lister back through the closing gap. “I’m not letting you do this. I’m not letting this happen.”  
“You’re too late to stop it.” Lister suddenly switched tack and pulled Rimmer close instead of pushing him away. He tumbled into him, and Lister wrapped his arms up around his neck, pressing their bodies close, their lips almost touching. 

“Just be honest with yourself, Rimsy,” he whispered. “What is it you’re really so desperate to stop? To save me from? I’ve already turned. And you could live with me being this way, you already said so. You can tolerate the thought of me not being human anymore. You can accept me being a monster, drinking blood to stay alive, sleeping in a coffin. I think you’d even tolerate the ‘little blips’ as you called it. You might lock me up but you wouldn’t kill me, no matter how bad it got. You’d learn to live with it, if it meant you wouldn’t lose me.” Lister tilted his head slightly to whisper in his ear. “What you can’t live with, is the idea of me with someone else. Of me lying in his arms every night. His lips on mine. Him touching me. Him fucking me. Of me belonging to him in a way I never belonged to you. That’s what you can’t stand, and the thought of it is driving you mad.” Lister kissed him, soft and deep, and Rimmer felt goosebumps prickle every inch of his skin. And then Lister threw him backwards, hurling him through the doorway.

He landed flat on his back with a thud, and sat up, shaken. He caught a final glimpse of Lister’s face before the door closed, and saw him smirk. “See ya, Smeghead.”  
“No!” He scrambled forward but Kryten put his remaining hand on his shoulder, holding him back. “Sir. Let him go.”  
“But…”  
“It’s the only way. Let him go. We’ll catch up.”  
The door sealed and the light turned green, indicating the outer door had released. Lister was out. 

Rimmer hauled himself to his feet and turned on Kryten. “Thanks a bunch for your support! Your contribution was invaluable! I don’t know how I would have managed without you.”  
“I don’t know how much more help I could realistically have been, Sir. What would you have liked me to do?”  
“Anything!”  
“I wasn’t sure I should intervene. The two of you seemed to be, as you humans say, ‘having a moment’.”  
“Having a moment? You think _that_ was having a moment?”  
“The nature of your conversations were somewhat intimate.”  
Rimmer felt his face burning. “He was just trying to get a reaction. Throw me off by making me uncomfortable.”  
“It certainly seemed to work.”  
Rimmer slammed his own palm angrily against the door release. “Forget it. Let’s just get Cat and get after him.”


	35. Chapter 35

Lister stepped out into the corridor and breathed deeply. A host of new scents and sensations overwhelmed him. The ship which had enclosed him for the last few decades of his life now felt like a huge new playground to be explored. But there was plenty of time for that. Right now he had just one simple objective. To follow the call. _Come to me._

He bolted down the hallway and thrilled at his own speed. It wasn’t quite running, it wasn’t quite flying, but somewhere in-between. It was something like teleportation, his body moving almost faster than his mind could keep up. He burst into the stairwell and leaned over the railing. The steps disappeared down in a square-shaped spiral for almost half a mile, a clear empty void down the centre. _Jump_.

He quivered with a mix of fear and delight. _Jump. You can do it. Quickest way down._ He bounced over the railing and dropped. The air rushed past his face, his too-large shirt billowing upwards. It felt incredible. He hit the ground far below in a cat-like crouch and sprang up lightly, shaking himself. It hadn’t even hurt.

He darted away again, zigzagging through the endless corridors, following the pull deep in his chest; not dragged this time, but excited and eager. His newly sensitive hearing picked up the sound of music in the distance, getting louder with every step.

When he found the place, his heart was hammering faster than it ever had in life. He threw back the double doors with a crash, and the music stopped. Suddenly, like in the gardens, he was in two places at once.

_Whump-whump-whump._ The sound of the ceiling fan pulsed above him. He was standing at the top of the cellar stairs, but he was no longer afraid of what waited at the bottom. He descended purposefully down the steps. At the same time, he walked down the aisle between the dusty grey seats, beneath the flickering lights, towards the figure waiting for him.

The cellar was filled with soft candlelight and the scent of dead flowers. Edward was waiting for him beside a large open coffin stuffed with dark red rose petals. The face in the cellar did not match the face before Lister now, but he didn’t care. Edward drew him close and kissed him. “Look at you. At last, after all this time. Millions of years of waiting, and you are finally what you were born to be. Beautiful. Deadly. Immortal. And mine.”

Lister kissed him back greedily. The lips against his in the cellar were plump and soft, but the skin beneath his hands in reality crackled like old paper. “I’m hungry,” he whispered. “I’m ready to hunt. I’m ready for _everything_.” His roving fingers brushed the wound in Edward’s chest and he felt him hiss sharply in response.  
“One thing at a time, my pet. One thing at a time.”

Lister’s baggy shirt and boxers dropped silently to the ground. Edward lifted and carried him bridal style up a few shallow steps, and lay him down on the threadbare velvet carpet. In the cellar, he nestled him down into the coffin amidst the rose petals. “I’m still weak, and you’re still newborn. We need to share our energy.”  
“How?”  
“Like this.” Edward lay down on top of him. Lister’s senses told him the body on his felt wizened, full of sharp uncomfortable angles, but he barely noticed. On his back in the scented coffin, he ran his fingers greedily over silky skin and smooth muscles. Edward cradled the back of his head, guiding his mouth to his neck. “Use those pretty sparkly new fangs and feed on me.” Lister needed no encouragement. He immediately latched on hungrily. “Ah, ah, ah!” Edward reprimanded breathlessly. “Gently.” In response, he sank his own teeth into Lister’s bare shoulder.

Lister’s mind whirled with pleasure and the thrill of new sensation as he suckled. The taste of Edward’s blood was different than it had been before, or maybe it was just that _he_ was different. The flavour was deeper, more nuanced. He could taste the age and strength and power in it, like the sap of a huge ancient tree, fortifying him. At the same time he could feel his own essence, hot like newly-forged steel, spilling into Edward; bright and fiery and healing. The energy flowed back and forth between them in a glowing circle. The feeling was exquisite. His cock immediately stiffened between them and he moaned.   
_Fuck me,_ he begged silently. _Fuck me now. It feels so good._  
 _Always so quick to excitement._ Edward reached down between them to firmly take hold of the hot stiff member demanding his attention. _But I need just a little more first._

His mouth pulled harder on Lister’s shoulder, making him moan and squirm. He could feel Edward getting hard against his thigh and rubbed against him impatiently. _Want. Want. Now.  
Patience.  
NOW!   
I can see you’re going to be a handful. _ _Teaching you self-control is going to take some time._ Edward shifted position, his bony taloned hands rearranging Lister’s limbs without breaking their hold on each other, to allow for a more intimate embrace. _But we’ve waited an eternity for this. And even my self-control has limits._  
He buried himself in him, sinking in deep. It should have hurt, but Lister felt nothing but pleasure. He shuddered beneath him in delight, automatically biting down harder on his neck in response. He’d wanted this for so long. _Yes! Yes!_  
 _Now you belong to me completely,_ Edward told him, beginning to move in him with slow deliberate thrusts. _We are wedded._

Lister writhed in mindless delight as Edward made love to him, still feeding on each other, their bodies rocking together in primal synchronisation. Lister was wild with overstimulation, drunk on blood and sex. This was beyond anything he’d ever experienced before. No human sensation could match it, nothing even came close. He could feel his strength growing, his senses sharpening further as he absorbed more of Edward’s power. He didn’t want this to end, but he was also filled with crackling restless energy. He wanted to run, to fly, to hunt. He wanted to punch through walls, swing from the chandeliers. He felt like an unexploded bomb aching to detonate.

Edward withdrew his teeth, sated for the time being. _Let go now. You’ve had enough._  
 _No! More!  
David…  
MORE!_

A brief sharp pain shot through Lister’s head and he reeled, releasing Edward’s neck and mewling indignantly. Edward shushed him, one strong hand closing around his throat to keep him under control as their lovemaking continued. _Do as you’re told. I am your husband. I am your master. And you will obey me._  
Lister hissed resentfully beneath him, though not quite angry enough to disengage from the act entirely. He was too caught up in the pleasure of it all, too close to orgasm to stop. Edward laughed softly. “Still so spicy. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. But it’s for your own good, my pet.” He reached down to rhythmically stroke Lister’s straining erection. “The main course will be here shortly and you don’t want to be too full to enjoy the fun, do you?”  
Lister’s eyes glowed in elated anticipation. Soon he was coming in Edward’s arms, overcome by pleasure more intense and all-encompassing than he’d ever known. His mind blew like a firework, all remaining thought and sense of self-awareness evaporating in the explosion. He howled like an animal, writhing in ecstatic abandon.

Edward gazed down at him, one eyebrow raised in amusement. _I was right. Taming you is going to be a long process. Maybe centuries. What fun it’s going to be._


	36. Chapter 36

“Can you smell him?” Rimmer asked anxiously as Cat sniffed around the door of the quarantine suite. “Can you find him?”  
“Yeah,” Cat pulled a face. “I think so.” The scent was still distinctly Lister, but tainted somehow, a sour note running beneath the spice. Instinctively his hand went to the cross around his neck where the true scent of his buddy still lingered, ingrained in the metal from years of wear. He rubbed the silver pendant fretfully between his fingers. The change in smell bothered him more than he cared to admit to the others. People changed their appearance and behaviour all the time, but the scent - the essence of who they were - was a constant. Small variations were normal, of course, depending where they’d been, what they’d done, what they’d eaten etc. But the baseline was always there, like a theme tune. Now Lister’s song was discordant. Cat didn’t like it.

He straightened up and eyed Kryten doubtfully. “What are we gonna do about you?”  
“What do you mean, Sir?”  
“You’ve only got one arm!”  
“Oh, think nothing of it,” Kryten waved the detached limb nonchalantly. “I’ll set aside some time later to repair myself.”  
“Wouldn’t it be better to do it now? We’re about to go pick a fight with a vamp; if it was me, I’d want both arms.”  
“Without Mr Lister’s assistance it will take me some time. I think our priority right now should be the extermination of our unwanted guest.”  
“Agreed.” Rimmer’s voice was oddly tense. “I’m ready to exterminate with _extreme_ prejudice.”  
“Are you?” Cat challenged. “Cos the last time we faced off with this dude it didn’t go great, and now we’ve got two of them to deal with.”

Rimmer scowled. “Edward is our primary target. If we kill him, we still have a chance of saving Lister. That has to be the goal.”  
“That ain’t going to be easy if Dormouse Cheeks is going to make a habit of tearing people’s arms off. I for one am not as easily repairable as you guys.”  
“So what are you saying?” Rimmer glared at him. “You’re not going to help?”  
“I didn’t say that,” Cat grumbled. He reached for the cross around his neck again, agitated. “He’s my buddy. We’re the posse. That’s how it is. All I’m saying is we need to be better prepared than we were before. And we need to be prepared for the fact that this may not turn out the way we want.”  
“Meaning?” Rimmer’s voice was icy.  
“He’s different now. Deep down different. I can smell it. I don’t think us taking out the big bloodsucker is going to change that.”  
“We don’t know unless we try.”  
Cat gave up. You couldn’t make someone hear something they didn’t want to hear. “Whatever,” he shrugged. “We’re going on a stakeout. Let’s grab the gear. We’ll stop for more supplies on the way.”  
“I don’t believe that’s the correct definition of a stakeout, Sir.”  
“Because the stakes need to go in not out?”  
“No, because…”  
“Shut up,” Rimmer snapped. “We need to get moving.”

Cat followed Lister’s trail down the corridors to the stairwell, then paused. “What is it, Sir?” Kryten asked.  
“Up or down?” Rimmer pressed impatiently.  
“Hang on.” Cat leaned over the railing and sniffed. “He went down. But not down the stairs.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“I think he jumped.”  
“That’s impossible. A drop like that would have killed him.”  
“He’s already dead.”  
“Yes, but you know what I mean! He’d have shattered every bone in his body.”  
“Apparently not.”  
“We have no way of knowing what his physical capabilities may be now,” Kryten added. “But either way, I’m afraid our only option is to take the long way down.”  
“I feel like every second we’re falling further behind,” Rimmer complained.  
“What’s the rush?” Cat started to head down the steps. “It’s over. He’s changed. What can the vamp do to him that he hasn’t already done?”  
Rimmer didn’t reply.

The journey through the ship that had taken Lister a matter of minutes took them over an hour, although they made a brief stop on the way to pick up some more things. They were following Cat along M deck when he stopped suddenly, his head snapping up. “Listen.”  
“What? What is it?”  
“Can’t you hear it yet?”  
“Obviously not or I wouldn’t have asked.”  
“Music.”

Kryten twisted one ear, turning the volume to max on his audio systems, and nodded. “He’s right, Sir. It sounds like...like a church organ.”  
“An organ?” Rimmer’s brows dipped in confusion for a moment, then he snapped his fingers. “Of course! The multi-faith, non-denominational, all-inclusive place of worship, meditation, and recreation is on this floor.”  
“The what?” Cat pulled a face.  
“Originally all the major religions each had their own space on board, but there was a bunch of controversy about it and they did away with them all.”  
“What controversy?”  
“Some of the smaller religious groups started complaining that they didn’t have their own dedicated area. Then the bigger groups started fighting over who had the best room. Size, equipment, air-conditioning, everything you could possibly think of and then some, they squabbled over it. It was very nearly the first ever religious war to be started over proximity to snack machines. In the end, the Captain had enough and closed them all - except this one which used to be the chapel - and said everyone had to share.”  
“Why’d they keep this one?”  
“It was the most central. It’s right in the middle of the ship, more or less.”  
“And did it stop everyone fighting?” Kryten asked.  
“What do you think?”  
Kryten shook his head ruefully, “Humans.”  
Rimmer took off at a run. “That must be where they are. Come on!”

As they drew nearer, he gradually started to pick up snatches of the sound as well. Just the odd note at first, the piercing highs and growling lows, then the middle tones, the range expanding the closer they came. By the time the double doors came into view at the end of the corridor, the music filled the air around them. Rimmer recognised the piece. “Toccata and Fugue.” His eyes narrowed poisonously. “The melodramatic bastard. I think he’s mocking us. All we need is for that electrical storm to swing back round for another pass, and we might as well be starring in the finale of our own schlock horror.”  
“Let’s just hope it is the finale, Sir.”  
“Yeah. And that the good guys win.” Cat was starting to look nervous. “Why would he be in here? I thought vampires hated churches?”  
“It’s not really a church. It’s barely even a place of worship. They stripped out any religious iconography to make it a one-size-fits-all space. I doubt there’s anything in there that will concern him, unless vampires have a particular aversion to folding plastic chairs.”

“The music is quite loud,” Kryten noted. “Perhaps if we sneak in quietly we can take him by surprise.”  
“Perhaps,” Rimmer allowed. He pulled a stake from his belt. “Or, if it’s a big dramatic showdown he wants, we let him have it.”  
“Are you feeling okay, Goalpost-Head?” Cat raised an eyebrow. “Sneak attack is far more your usual combat style.”  
“He’s right, Sir. Are you sure this is the right time for you to try and channel your inner Ace?”  
“Ace is retired,” Rimmer said sharply. “And this isn’t his fight. It’s _mine_. I want to kill this jumped-up leech, and I want him to see his death coming. And I want him to know it was me.” His jaw clenched angrily, remembering Lister’s words to him. _Edward was right. Love has too many limitations._ “I’ll show him what a big mistake he made when he underestimated old Arnie J.”

He wasn’t Ace anymore. In some ways, he never truly had been. But every single one of the tiny coffins orbiting that planet had been Arnold Rimmer, in some form or another. And regardless of timeline, universe, or anything else, he knew in the very atoms of his being that there was one thing all of them had in common besides a name; one thing that was guaranteed to unleash the full fury of the multiverse’s greatest hero, no matter how inept an incarnation they might have been.

Someone had hurt Dave Lister. And deep inside his heart, he could feel a billion Rimmers screaming out for vengeance. He tightened his grip on the stake and kicked open the double doors with a crash.


	37. Chapter 37

Rimmer squinted against the distracting flicker of the lights. In a poor attempt to make the room look more ecclesiastical it had been designed with a vaulted ceiling, and hung with circular medieval-style iron chandeliers fitted with cheap orange flame-effect bulbs. Unused for millions of years, Edward’s presence was currently causing the already ancient electrics to go haywire.

The heavy strains of Bach continued. Rimmer finally caught sight of Edward sitting up on the balcony at the organ keyboard with his back to them. He must have heard them enter, but seemed indifferent to the intrusion, continuing to play. Incensed by his dismissive attitude, Rimmer hurled the metal stake in his hand straight at Edward’s back. He knew the aim wasn’t accurate enough to spear his heart, but it would get the bastard’s attention. Sure enough, Edward whipped round and caught it in mid-air before it struck, the organ pipes finally falling silent. He unfurled himself from the stool and leaned over the balcony. “Well, well. If it isn’t the intrepid vampire hunters.”

The crew stared at him in revulsion. This wasn’t the demon-beast they’d seen before, nor was it the deceptively normal-looking man they’d seen Lister feeding on in the cargo bay. His form was ostensibly human, but the skin was waxy and pulled tight over the bones almost like a mummy. His eyes bulged from the sunken sockets. Rimmer felt his lips curl in disgust, but Cat spoke first. “Damn. Dude looks like he got a discount facelift at the world’s worst salon. What’d they use, a vacuum cleaner?”  
“After our last encounter I had to focus my energy on healing rather than appearances,” Edward remarked coolly. He opened his shirt to reveal a bony but unblemished chest; the wound left by the cross no longer visible. “With a little help from my lovely assistant, I’m starting to rejuvenate.”

Rimmer stepped forward threateningly. “What sort of help?”  
“He kindly donated a little more of his blood to perk me up. But don’t look at me like that, I returned the favour. Although it didn’t affect him _quite_ as I was expecting.”  
“What do you mean?” Rimmer demanded. “What have you done to him? Where is he?”  
Edward didn’t reply, just inclined his head slowly upwards. The three of them followed his gaze. Rimmer’s eyes widened in shock and he gulped. 

Lister was crawling around naked on the ceiling, his dreads dangling down vertically, emphasising the disturbing gravity-defying wrongness of the sight. He seemed oblivious to their presence, entirely absorbed with exploring his new environment and capabilities.   
“Oh my goodness,” Kryten’s hands flew to his face.  
“What the smeg?” Rimmer whispered in horror.

“He’s been up there a while,” Edward commented nonchalantly. “I thought I’d leave him to it. I’m sure he’ll come down eventually. When he’s hungry.” He smiled tightly.  
“What’s wrong with him?” Rimmer blurted out in dismay.  
“Wrong? Nothing. He’s just adjusting to a whole new mental and physical landscape. It takes a while to be able to handle such an intense influx of sensory input, to process that the limitations you’ve lived within your whole life no longer mean anything. His brain’s just taking a little holiday to deal with it all and left his instincts in charge for now.”  
“For how long???”  
“Oh, probably not too long. I expect he’ll start talking again in a decade or so. Maybe.”

Rimmer’s stomach lurched as he watched Lister skittering about amidst the flickering lights above their heads. Any hopes he’d still harboured of being able to reason with or control him gurgled painfully down the drain. He forced himself to tear his gaze away from the awful sight and fixed his attention on Edward, his eyes blazing with fury. “I will kill you for what you’ve done to him, you filthy shrivelled ghoul.”  
“With this?” Edward raised an unimpressed eyebrow at the metal tent peg in his hand, then dropped it disdainfully. “Unlikely. You’re being very negative about all this, you know. You should be happy for him.”  
“Happy?” the three of them repeated in indignant unison.  
“This is what he was always destined for. Don’t you understand that? You think someone like Dave was supposed to just get old and fat and fade away? With his spark, his spirit? Look at him. He’s more alive now than he’s been in years.” Edward straightened up, spreading his arms wide. “They call me The One Who Endures. And I have. For countless centuries, I have endured, and so has he; longer than any other in human history. Fate brought us together so that we could endure together: to the end of time itself. And nobody can get in the way of that. Certainly not you.”

“If you’re so sure of that, then come down here and fight.” Cat twirled another metal stake threateningly in his hands.  
Edward narrowed his eyes and burst into black smoke that swirled and billowed down from the balcony and took form again at the other end of the aisle. “You should have learned after our last meeting that you’re no match for me.”  
“If my memory serves, our last meeting ended up with you disintegrating into a sad puddle of vermin and running for your undead life.” Rimmer retorted.  
“Not before I’d already dealt with two of you. And now I have someone else on my side.” 

Edward looked up again. He didn’t say a word but, up on the ceiling, Lister’s head whipped round. Even from a distance, Rimmer could see the crimson glow of his eyes. Quick as a flash, he scurried headfirst down the wall like a lizard and darted to Edward’s side, nuzzling into him. Rimmer’s jaw clenched at the sight. He stared at Lister in distress. Since feeding again, he appeared even younger. The figure in front of him was petite and probably barely twenty-five. Somehow the baby-face made the red eyes, fangs, and feral behaviour even more disturbing. 

“Are you hungry, pet?” Edward bent down and kissed his forehead possessively, “Your supper has arrived.”  
“Lister…” Rimmer tried desperately to break through. “It’s us. It’s the posse. We’re here to save you.”  
“Sir,” Kryten’s voice was shaking, “I don’t think that means anything to him anymore. I’m not sure he can even hear you.”  
“You know which one to go for, don’t you?” Edward coaxed gleefully. “You can smell the blood.”  
Lister fixed his red eyes on them and started to visibly tremble with excitement. He began to make a bizarre chattering sound, like a cat at a window watching the birds outside. “Get them,” Edward hissed, and Lister sprang forward, launching himself directly at Cat.

He moved so fast that Rimmer and Kryten had no time to intervene. He knocked Cat flat on his back and immediately lunged for his neck, fangs bared. “Hey!” Cat shrieked, “Get the hell off me, buddy! You’re creasing my shirt!” He grabbed hold of Lister’s bare shoulders and shoved him away. Lister screeched and scrambled away from him, hissing and spitting angrily. Kryten hurried over and held out his remaining hand to help Cat up. “Are you okay, Sir? Did he bite you?”  
“Nah,” Cat held up the silver pendant at his neck smugly, then wriggled his fingers. They were covered in silver rings. “As always, style saves the day.”  
“It was certainly a good idea to stop at that jewellery store on our way down.”

Edward was furious. “You think those stupid trinkets will save you?”  
“It’s working so far, buddy.”  
“David is young and strong. The silver will hurt, but it won’t damage him the way it does me.”  
“That’s fine with us,” Rimmer replied coldly. “We don’t want to kill him. Just you.” He pulled another stake from his belt and started to advance down the aisle towards him.  
“You might not have a choice if you want to save yourself,” Edward snarled, “Dave! Kill him! Tear him limb from limb!” 

Rimmer hesitated, the stake lowering uncertainly. He was wearing his own silver protection charms - a chain, several rings and a bracelet - but if Lister got between him and Edward he wasn’t sure what to do. He’d already learned the hard way how strong he was now. Even if Lister couldn’t bite him, he could probably still cause a fair amount of damage. And hard-light drive or not, it would hurt. 

He didn’t have to worry. Lister responded to Edward’s command with a resentful hiss and scampered back up the wall. “David! Do as I say! That’s an order!”  
Lister mewled angrily and crouched on one of the beams, glaring. Rimmer stared at him for a moment, then started to laugh; a soft chuckle that grew into a full belly laugh, the kind he had rarely ever had cause to emit in either life or death.  
“What’s so funny?” Edward fumed.  
“You smegging dimwit,” Rimmer hooted. “You utter fool. Dave Lister doesn’t take orders from anyone. Believe me, I should know.”  
“He is my progeny! He is bound to me! I control him completely.”  
“Apparently he disagrees.”  
“Dave! Come down here now!” Edward roared. Lister didn’t even blink.  
“You’re wasting your breath. It looks like all that power you gave him didn’t just blow his mind, it also blew any hold you had over him. Mind control only works when there’s a coherent mind _to_ control. And he’s strong enough now to resist you. You idiot, you’ve smegged this up catastrophically.”  
“He attacked your feline friend on my order.”  
“Because he _wanted_ to. Now it’s turned out not so fun, he’s changed his mind. You’re on your own, miladdo.”  
“Yeah,” Cat came and stood beside Rimmer, brandishing his own stake, and Kryten joined them; the three of them standing united. “And you’re about to find out what you get when you mess with the Red Dwarf posse.” 


	38. Chapter 38

Edward bared his teeth and flung one hand towards the ceiling. The lightbulbs in the iron chandelier overhead exploded, raining glass down on them, and then the whole thing dropped. Rimmer and Cat both dived out of the way but Kryten was knocked to the ground, pinned beneath the heavy metal and tangled wires. “Oh, confound it! My hydraulics aren’t as sprightly as they used to be.”  
“Are you okay?” Rimmer asked, white-faced.  
“I’m in no immediate peril, Sir, but I’m not sure how much assistance I can be at this time. I don’t believe I can extract myself single-handed, as it were.”  
“One down,” Edward said, coldly smug. “Two to go.”  
“Bring it on, Bat-Breath.” Cat sprang to his feet and leapt at Edward, stake raised.

Edward whirled out of the way, reappearing behind Rimmer and launching him across the room. He crashed into a pile of chairs. “Ow!”  
“Get up!” Cat yelled. “You’re a hologram, he can’t hurt you!”  
“Just because he can’t hurt me, doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt!” Rimmer yelled back angrily, staggering to his feet. Cat ignored his complaints and used the opportunity while Edward was distracted to hurl a stake at him. It lodged in his shoulder and he roared in pain and fury, but didn’t fall. Above them, Lister let out a shriek; whether in excitement or distress it was impossible to tell. Edward wrenched the stake out and threw it back at Cat with force. He quickly dived to the floor and it flew over him, embedding in the wall behind him with a heavy thunk. “Too slow, Sucker!” he crowed.  
In the blink of an eye, Edward was standing over him. “You were saying?”  
“Aw dammit!” Cat squeaked. He tried to dart away, but Edward moved faster. Careful to avoid the silver necklace, he grabbed him by the lapels and lifted him off his feet. Cat managed to ram another stake into his upper arm but it wasn’t enough. Edward threw him straight up towards the ceiling and he crashed down again, hard.  
“No!” Rimmer shouted, running over. To his relief, he heard Cat groan. He sat up, dazed, then slumped down again. “Interesting,” Edward remarked. “Apparently cats _don’t_ always land on their feet.” He pulled the stake from his arm and raised it up, ready to drive it through Cat’s chest.

Rimmer leapt on him from behind, clamping his legs around his waist and grabbing the raised arm with both hands. Edward screamed as the silver rings burned into his flesh and he dropped the stake. He spun like a tornado, throwing Rimmer off, and inspected the damage. “You cursed little insect!” He shook the arm, trying to ease the pain. “I’ll kill you for that!”  
“I’m already dead,” Rimmer retorted, climbing back to his feet. “And so are you. Frankly, of the two of us, I’ll wager I’m the more durable.”  
“I’m faster than you. I’m stronger than you.” Edward stalked towards him, his shrivelled face twisted in rage. Rimmer gulped, but the words triggered a memory in his head. A memory that didn’t belong to him. _There’s no point trying to escape. I’m faster than you. I’m stronger than you._ He remembered Lister, crawling terrified across the floor of the cellar all those years ago, hearing those exact same words. He squared his shoulders. If Lister had fought Edward then and won - without any undead powers or hard-light strength to fall back on - then by smegging jove, he could do it too. “You might think you are,” he retorted, “but that’s your problem. That’s where you’ve failed at every turn. You‘re overconfident.”

“Failed?” Edward scoffed. “I’ve won! Dave is mine. Your two friends are incapacitated. You are all alone and you are no match for me. I am immortal. You are nothing but a ghost made of light.”  
“Lister isn’t yours! He never was and never will be!” Rimmer snarled. “Haven’t you grasped that yet? You thought you had him where you wanted him three million years ago, and you ended up getting a big shock. You thought the same thing right up until a few minutes ago, but you were wrong again. Hoooo-ee, were you wrong. You underestimated him so badly. Because you don’t know him. You never cared about who he is, or was. He was cute, and he was charming, and that’s all you ever saw. You moron, if you think he belongs to you then you know _nothing_ about Dave Lister.”  
“I have seen inside his mind, I can read it like a book. There is nothing - not a single thought or secret - that Dave can hide from me.”  
“You know smeg all!” Rimmer fumed through clenched teeth. “If you knew him like I do, you’d have known from the start that this whole scheme of yours was doomed. You’d know he’s a stubborn little git with a rebellious streak a mile wide, and he has only ever answered to one person - and that person is himself. You don’t know how he likes his coffee. You don’t know what movies he watches when he’s sad, or what music he plays when he’s happy. You think you learned everything there is to know about him over one summer when he was barely more than a boy? You’ve got thirty years of catching up to do before you’re on my level, Squire.”

“Perhaps.” Edward narrowed his eyes. “But I know a few things about him that you don’t. I know Dave _intimately_. Biblically, you might say. I know where to touch him to make his blood run hot. I know the sounds he makes in the throes of pleasure. And I know that you could have found out those things for yourself if you’d ever been brave enough.”  
“Bravery has nothing to do with it!” Rimmer‘s hands curled into fists. “Excuse me for not taking advantage of someone who was having his strings jerked like a marionette!”  
“You still think that was all down to me?” Edward smirked. “I’m afraid I can’t take the blame for all Dave’s behaviour recently. My influence gave him fewer inhibitions and stronger drives, but I didn’t make him do anything. He wanted what he wanted.”  
“I don’t believe you.”  
“I’ve got no reason to lie. You’re no threat to me now, not that you ever were. The David that you knew and wanted is dead, and so is the part of him that wanted you.”

Rimmer hesitated, filled with ambivalent emotions. Surely Edward was lying; trying to distract him. But…could it be true? Had Lister had genuine feelings for him? Feelings that were truly his and had nothing to do with his vampiric appetites? He remembered how he’d felt pressed against him in the quarantine suite; the softness of his lips, the passion in his sighs. _We wasted our lives, let’s not waste our deaths... I want to be with you just once before I’m gone...You know what we could have been...All those years we lived side by side, slept inches apart, and all that time you watched me, and wanted me, and did nothing...Love has too many limitations…_

“You should have done yourself a favour and taken him up on the offer when you had the chance.” Edward sniped. “I can’t pretend I enjoyed watching him throw himself at you, but I’d have allowed it in the circumstances. However, I’m afraid that ship has long since sailed, and I’m not inclined to share.”  
Rimmer felt his throat tighten, his mind whirring. “I...I never wanted...”  
“Oh, please. Save your flimsy protests. The jealousy is radiating off you like a heat shimmer. It’s tragic the two of you were too blind and stubborn to work things out sooner, but what’s done is done, and it would have ended like this either way. He was meant for me, not you, and the ring I gave him can’t be taken off. Love doesn’t always conquer all.” Edward scoffed. “I can’t believe he was so certain you were going to save him.”

Rimmer lunged forward, his hands reaching for Edward’s neck. He dodged out of the way, and Rimmer’s image flickered as he manipulated the power going to his light-bee. His silver protection charms and weapons dropped to the floor as his projection stuttered between hard and soft-light. “Smeg!”  
“Oh no, you’ve dropped all your toys,” Edward tutted. “What will you do now?”  
“What will _you_ do?” Rimmer challenged. “My hard-light drive is too tough for you to break. You can’t touch my light-bee because of the silver. You can’t _do_ anything to me. But I can still do plenty to you, you overgrown mosquito.” Suddenly he surged back to hard-light. Edward leapt at him and knocked him down onto his back. He landed on the machete that had dropped from his belt, the blade digging painfully into his thigh. Edward was pinning him down with his hands locked around his throat. He tried to switch to soft-light and couldn’t. His projection was jammed. He could feel his light-bee starting to heat up with the force of the power surge. “What am I going to do?” Edward hissed. “I’m going to burn out your power source. And then I’m going to smash that annoying little bee of yours into a thousand pieces. Then I’m going to do the same to the mech’s battery. And then Dave and I are going to tear that Cat apart like a rotisserie chicken.”

Rimmer tried to prise the skeletal hands from around his neck without success. He reached down, trying to get hold of the machete underneath him, but the handle was just out of reach, his fingertips unable to gain purchase on the smooth surface. He scrabbled at it, trying to ease it up towards his palm millimetre by millimetre. The blade was wedged under his thigh, pinned by the dual weight of him and Edward. He began to smell burning, he was starting to sweat from the heat. He didn’t have long before his bee burned out. Edward grinned triumphantly, his eyes glowing red, and Rimmer was struck by another shared memory. Lister lying on his back in that coffin three million years ago, fighting to get away as Edward held him down, those red eyes boring into his.

He looked up and caught a glimpse of Lister up above him, lying naked across the beam like a big cat sprawled on a tree branch, one bare leg dangling down languorously. He was watching the fight intently. Rimmer stared at him. He looked roughly the same age now as he must have been then, and - just like then - so deceptively sweet. Twenty-four year old Lister might not have had fangs, but he’d had more grit and determination than Edward had ever bargained for, and nerves of absolute steel. He’d had one chance, and he’d seized it with both hands, and he’d won. And that was all Rimmer needed - one chance. He strained, stretching his fingers as far as he could, reaching desperately with every muscle for the machete.

“It’s no good,” Edward told him, bearing down harder. “It’s over! You lose! You’re no hero. You are a sad, pathetic excuse for a man. You couldn’t save David, and you can’t save yourself!” He looked up, following the direction of Rimmer’s stare, and his lip curled with bitter humour. “And if you don’t mind, I’ll thank you to stop ogling my husband.”

Rimmer’s eyes went black with rage. “He’s not your husband!” he snarled, his voice cracking from the pressure on his throat. With a burst of fury-fuelled adrenaline he heaved himself up and his fingers finally snatched the handle of the machete and pulled it free. “He’s _mine!_ ” 

He swung the blade upwards with all the strength born of hatred; and Edward’s head flew from his shoulders in a scarlet spray of blood.


	39. Chapter 39

For a few seconds Rimmer was paralysed with shock, unable to believe what he’d just done. He could feel droplets of hot blood on his face, the sagging weight of Edward’s body on his. He quickly heaved it off and, to his horror, it started to crawl away, searching blindly for its head. Rimmer made a strangled sound in his throat, twitching and writhing with disgust. Obviously decapitation alone wasn’t going to be enough; he was still going to have to stake the bastard. He became aware of another sound, a high-pitched shrieking up above. He looked up to see Lister pacing around agitated in the rafters.

“Sir!” Kryten called from across the room. “Sir, what’s happening? Are you alright?”  
“I’m fine.” He could feel his light-bee cooling, Edward no longer interfering with the power. “I...I cut his head off.”  
“Really?”  
“Yes, really,” Rimmer snapped, offended by the doubtful tone of voice. “But it doesn’t seem to have been quite the coup de grâce you’d expect it to be.”

“Dammit,” Rimmer heard Edward’s voice rising up from somewhere on the floor. “Where is it? Where’s it gone? I can’t see.” He looked around, and a brief scan of his surroundings revealed Edward’s head face-down under one of the chairs in the middle of a spreading bloodstain; but before he could move, Lister spotted it too. He leapt down from the ceiling and pounced on it. “Wait!” Rimmer automatically darted forward to intervene but Lister snarled at him furiously, and he quickly backed away again. He wasn’t sure there was any way to wrestle a severed head out of Lister’s hands without getting hurt.

“Good boy,” Edward cooed. “Just put it next to me so I can reach.”   
“No!” Rimmer yelled, frustrated. “Don’t give it back to him!” Lister tottered uncertainly towards the flailing body on the ground.   
“See?” Edward’s head boasted. “You thought I couldn’t control him. He’s completely in my power!” 

Across the room, Cat groaned again and started to stir. Suddenly Lister stopped, sniffing the air. His eyes widened and glowed. He began to make the strange chattering noise again, his upper lip twitching upwards to expose his fangs. “No,” Edward snapped, “not now. Fix me first.” Lister started to growl, low in his throat. “I know you’re hungry but you need to focus. You can chase the kitty once my head is on straight. I’ll help you kill him and we’ll feed together.”

Lister dropped Edward’s head like a toddler discarding an uninteresting toy, and began to stalk forward, his eyes fixed up ahead. “David! David, come back here! I command you!”  
Rimmer raced to try and get between Lister and Cat, but suddenly realised that Cat wasn’t the focus of his attention. He was moving towards Edward’s shambling headless body. Blood was still pumping from the neck. Too much blood for a newly-formed vampire to ignore or resist. He pounced. “No! David! David! Stop!” 

Rimmer watched with revulsion as Lister latched onto the bloody stump of Edward’s neck and began to feast. “Stop, damn you!” The cries fell on deaf ears. Like a shark in the midst of frenzy, Lister had lost all control. Rimmer looked on, appalled, as he tore at the body beneath him with his teeth and hands. Edward’s helpless screams echoed off the vaulted ceiling. Rimmer heard awful wet ripping sounds, the snap and crack of bones, and saw entrails fly up in the air. He turned away, gagging. A few seconds later, Cat staggered to his side. He looked as sickened as Rimmer felt. “What do we do?” Rimmer croaked. “I don’t think we can stop him.”  
“I’m not inclined to give it a try,” Cat agreed weakly.

Eventually Edward’s screams gurgled to a stop. Rimmer and Cat peeped anxiously through their fingers. Lister, slathered head to toe in blood, was sitting smugly on what remained of Edward’s corpse, contentedly chewing on his heart.   
“Ooooh myyyyy gooooooood,” Cat groaned nauseously.  
“Is he dead?” Rimmer whispered.  
“He sure as heck don’t look _well_ ,” Cat retorted with a grimace.  
“I mean...we’re supposed to put a stake through his heart,” Rimmer went on, vaguely in shock. “Does this...does this _count_?”  
“I ain’t got a clue, buddy. All I know is I’ve got a sudden urge to become vegetarian.” He slunk away, “Let’s get Kryten back on his feet, then we can decide what to do next.”  
“Lister…”  
“...Doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere until he’s finished his snack. Come on, help me move that big ugly chandelier.”

Together they managed to lift it enough for Kryten to crawl out, and he surveyed the carnage. “Oh goodness. I’m going to need more than Shake & Vac to get these stains out.”  
“Yes. The _carpets_ are our biggest concern right now.” Rimmer rolled his eyes. They nervously edged back towards Edward’s mangled remains. Lister warily watched them approach, then - apparently sated for the time being - bolted away into the far corner.  
“What are we going to do with him?” Rimmer asked despairingly.  
“I’m not sure there’s much we can do, Sir. Hopefully with time and patience he’ll start to get some of his personality back.”  
“And until then?”  
“Maybe we can tempt him back to quarantine with a nice rare steak?”

“Whatever. Let’s just deal with one problem at a time,” Cat said impatiently. “We can start by burning what’s left of this sucker and making sure he’s not going to get up and start crawling around again.”  
“Agreed. Kryten, go grab the flamethrowers. Cat, you get his head.”  
“You cut it off, _you_ get it.”  
“Exactly. _I_ cut it off. I did the hard part while you were taking a nap. So you should go.”  
“I’m not touching it.” Cat folded his arms. “Nuh-uh. No way. Gross.”  
“Oh, for smeg’s sake,” Rimmer stomped over and reluctantly bent down to pick it up. He shuddered as his fingers slid into the hair. “Euurgh! Ohmygodohmygodohmygod smeg smeg smeg…” He carried it back at arms length and quickly dropped it into the gory cavity of Edward’s chest with a wet splat. “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod…” He did a jerky dance of disgust, frantically rubbing his hand on his trousers.

Kryten returned with the flamethrowers, and they gathered around ready. “Should we say a few words first?” he asked earnestly.  
“I’ll say a few words,” Rimmer growled. “Fuck you, Edward.” He resisted the urge to give the mutilated body a kick.  
“Sir, you used the F-word!”  
“Oh, get over it.”  
“It may not be poetry, but I think that pretty much sums it up.” Cat agreed. “So long, bloodsucker. You messed with the wrong crew.” He fired his flamethrower. The other two followed suit. Edward’s body immediately burst into fierce blue flames, immolating fast, and a toxic smell filled the air.

Lister let out a horrifying scream. He threw himself to the ground, thrashing wildly. Rimmer immediately dropped his flamethrower and ran to him. “Lister!” He fell to his knees beside him. Cat and Kryten followed. “What’s happening to him?”   
“It’s almost as if the fire is burning him too,” Kryten observed, dismayed.  
“It doesn’t make sense! He didn’t bat an eyelid when he was tearing Edward apart.” Rimmer stared in horror as blood started to trickle from Lister’s eyes, nose and mouth. His shrieks of agony were terrible.  
“I’ll put out the flames,” Kryten babbled desperately, “Maybe he’ll be okay.” He started to go but Rimmer grabbed his arm.   
“No,” he said hoarsely.  
“No? What do you mean ‘no’? He’s _dying_.” Cat raged.  
Rimmer’s face was sheet-white. “We can’t.” His voice was dull and heavy. “We need to burn Edward down to ash. We have to. There’s no other way to be certain.”  
“So what do we do?” Cat asked. For a moment, Rimmer didn’t reply and there was nothing but the sound of Lister’s screams; but Lister’s voice rang in his ears even louder. _I don’t want to be a monster...I expect you to do your duty. Not just to the Space Corps, not just to your crew. But to me._

“We do our duty,” he croaked. He raised one shaking hand. “Give me the machete.”  
“Sir, no!”  
“We’ve got no choice! I promised him!”  
“But…”  
“Either he survives this and lives as some demented creature of the night, or he doesn’t and he dies in agony! He wouldn’t have wanted either! Just let me put him out of his misery. Do it!” Cat hesitated for only a second more, then pulled the machete from his belt and handed it silently to Rimmer.  
“I can’t watch,” Kryten covered his face with a sob.  
Rimmer felt tears spilling down his own face. _It’s not him anymore. It’s not him. Just do it. Let him go._ “Lister, I’m so sorry.” He raised the machete above his head.


	40. Chapter 40

Stretched out on the roof beam, Lister watched the fight playing out below with eager curiosity. His shoulders were still smarting from the touch of the silver, and he had no intention of getting stung again. He’d wait up here to see who came out on top, then partake of the spoils.

The part of his mind in the cellar paced impatiently, whirling like a Catherine wheel on bonfire night. This place was too dark, too confining. He was bored and frustrated, annoyed his feeding hadn’t gone as planned. He was vaguely aware of Edward nattering at him, but he may as well have been whistling like a Clanger. The words were meaningless noise. Edward grabbed his arm and he threw him off irritably. The ring mark on his finger was throbbing but he ignored it, his attention elsewhere. He stared at the stairs. He’d been here before. He knew this place well. And he’d got out before...somehow...but he couldn’t quite piece it together. The memories were fractured, interspersed with other fragments of time that might have been real or imagined, and strange red flashes of light. He couldn’t think straight.

He started to climb the stairs but Edward quickly hauled his mind back. Suddenly he was on the ground, bound in heavy chains. He thrashed against them angrily. Edward grabbed him by the throat, forcing him to look up and focus. “Look at me! Look at me! I am talking to you! I am your master. I _made_ you. You will listen when I speak, and you will do what I say.”  
“You didn’t make me,” Lister hissed. “I was me long before I met you.” Furious, he tore the chains from the wall and threw them off, hurling Edward across the room with them. He sat up, staring at Lister with a combination of rage and astonishment.  
“Ungrateful delinquent! I made you what you are! This strength, this power, it’s all because of me!”  
“I’m more than what you gave me,” Lister told him defiantly, and turned his attention back to the stairs.

Edward reappeared in front of him, blocking the way. “You’re on a high right now from my blood, but you’ll come down again within a few hours. Then you’ll be weak and hungry, and you’ll need me. Think about that.”  
“I’m hungry now!”  
“Then help me kill these stupid fools so we can eat.”  
“They have silver.”  
“It will barely mark you.”  
“I’m not going to be your shield,” Lister seethed.  
“Yes, you will. You’ll be whatever I tell you to be, because _I own you_.” Edward leaned close into his face. Without moving a muscle, Lister flexed his mind and threw him straight through the wall.

Red light poured through the hole, and he stared at it, fascinated. He moved toward it, slipped through the gap, and found himself inside a crimson plasma ball. Snatches of memory floated past, but were they his or Edward’s? Everything was tangled and entwined, both familiar and unfamiliar.

In reality, he watched as the figures below him wrestled, and fidgeted with excitement as Edward pinned the other man to the ground. Part of him wanted to join in the fight, to let loose and see what he could do, but he was too unsettled and distracted; and it felt like a waste of energy. He couldn’t feed on that man down there, and he couldn’t feed from Edward while he was still occupied. He sprawled out on the beam and peered down, trying to see what was happening. The man on his back looked up at him and their eyes met. The look on his face was strange. He stared at Lister like he was the only thing that existed at that moment, like there wasn’t a vampire sitting on his chest, like he was the answer to every question he’d ever asked. Lister stared back, intrigued. He smelt a change in the air, a shift in the atmosphere. And then the man cut off Edward’s head.

Lister sprang to his feet like he’d had an electric shock. He felt the blow, but not in the sense of pain. It was more like the sensation of falling in your sleep, the feeling that the world had suddenly lurched unexpectedly and impossibly beneath you. He yelped, disorientated and unnerved.

The plasma ball span crazily around him. Images popped and crackled like the whole thing was short-circuiting. Lister fled back to the cellar and ran up the steps. The door at the top was locked. Edward appeared beside him and threw him back down the stairs. “There’s no way out! Don’t you understand that yet, you little fool? You’re trapped here. _Forever_. And unless you help me, we’re both going to die.” The hole in the wall began to crumble, more red light pouring through, flickering like lightning.

The vision of Edward before him started to warp and shift. He was shrivelling, weakening, his flesh shrinking back against the bones until his inner form matched the outer. “You saw what he did. Now get down there and help me.” Lister snarled rebelliously, but he was frightened and unsure. He didn’t understand what was happening, but he didn’t think it was good. Red cracks started to appear in the ceiling. “Do it! Before the whole place caves in! If the cellar collapses, we both die!”

Lister leapt down and scooped up Edward’s head. The other man tried to stop him but he quickly backed away when Lister bared his teeth. “Good boy,” Edward cooed. “Just put it next to me so I can reach.”   
He moved uncertainly towards the body, then stopped and stared. The scent of blood filled the air, dazzling him with its intensity, but it wasn’t just the smell that was captivating him. The blood was glowing. It was spilling from the stump of Edward’s neck like pure white light. He gazed at it, hypnotised. It called to him. His stomach growled. “No,” Edward snapped, in his hands and head, “not now. Fix me first.” Lister started to growl, low in his throat. “I know you’re hungry but you need to focus. You can chase the kitty once my head is on straight. I’ll help you kill him and we’ll feed together.” But Lister didn’t care about the Cat. His smell was nothing compared to this, and he was covered in nasty silver. This. This was what he wanted. This was what he needed. _The blood is the light. The blood is the life._

He dropped Edward’s head and threw himself at the body on the ground. “David! David, come back here! I command you!” He ignored the cries and began to feast.

Down in the cellar, Edward struck him across the face. “What do you think you are doing?!”  
Lister knocked him backwards in retaliation with a feral snarl. “The blood is the life!”  
“Idiot! You’re going to kill us both!’  
“No. I’m not.” The red cracks splintering the cellar began to glow white instead. Lister closed his eyes, absorbing the light like it was the rays of the sun. They felt like home.  
“David! David! Stop!”   
“No.”  
“Stop, damn you!” Edward was getting smaller, thinner, his form crumbling. “It’s too much for you. It’s too much power. You’re not strong enough yet to contain it.”  
“Yes, I am. I was made to contain it. It’s mine.” The darkness that had eclipsed his soul began to slowly shift, forced back by the light spilling into him. It gleamed diamond bright. “I’m Dave Lister. And I’m taking my life back.”

He reached for the source of the light, digging through flesh and bone to find it. He tore open Edward’s chest and saw it, the heart beating like a ball of pure luminous energy, pumping on stolen life. _His_ life. He tore it free and began to consume it, the light flooding through him. It was bliss.

Edward collapsed to the floor of the cellar. He was little more now than scraps of ragged flesh clinging to bone. His protruding eyes swivelled in his skull, fixing on Lister standing over him. “I gave you too much power too soon,” he rasped. “The hologram was right. I underestimated you.”  
“Yeah,” Lister agreed mildly. “You did. But your blood isn’t what broke your hold on me. Although it helped.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“I told you before. I remember that now. I told you I only ever wanted one thing from you. And I got it. After that, you just weren’t as interesting to be honest.” He shrugged, almost apologetically. “Now there’s other things I want. Someone else I want. And I don’t need you anymore.”

He stepped over Edward’s withering corpse, and climbed the cellar stairs. The door was still locked. He shook it angrily. Edward gave a horrible dry chuckle behind him. “You can’t go back. You can’t escape. What’s done is done. Killing me won’t change that. Even if you survive what comes next, you’re still locked for eternity in the cage I built for you. And now you’ll spend it alone.”  
“What are you talking about?”

The flamethrowers fired, and in the chapel - and the cellar - Edward burst into flames. Blue fire filled the room, crawling up the walls and ceiling in an explosion of searing heat. Lister screamed with pain. He could see nothing through the flames but he could hear Edward laughing. He threw himself frantically at the door, pounding at it in desperation. “No! No! Let me out!”  
He heard a final faint echo of Edward’s voice. _It was always your destiny to die in this room. One way or another._ Lister screamed in agony as the flames surrounded and consumed them both. 


	41. Chapter 41

Rimmer’s arm froze mid-swing as the screams suddenly fell silent; the machete blade hovering bare inches from Lister’s throat. He held his breath, trembling, and watched as Lister's eyes glazed over and he slowly went limp; the pain-clenched muscles easing, no breath passing his parted lips. The life had burned out of him. Rimmer dropped the blade, both ashamed that he hadn’t acted soon enough to ease his suffering, and relieved he no longer had to. “It doesn’t matter,” he whispered. “He’s gone.”

The room echoed with silence, the only audible sound the soft crackle of the flames feeding on Edward’s rapidly disintegrating remains.   
“Do we need to burn him too?” Cat whispered unhappily.  
“Probably,” Rimmer’s voice was gravelly. “But not just yet. I can’t...I can’t bear it.” The tears overwhelmed him and he bent over Lister’s lifeless body with a desolate whine of sorrow. He’d known it was possible - likely even - that it could end this way, but he still wasn’t prepared for the grief that swamped him, for the physical pain that washed through his heart and stomach like acid. The weight that had been hanging over him for days, ever since he’d first realised how much danger Lister was truly in, had finally dropped. And Rimmer was crushed. He buried his face in Lister’s bloody chest, wrapped his arms around him and sobbed. 

  
In the inferno of the cellar, Lister lay curled in a smouldering ball beside the door. He could no longer move or scream. The heat and the pain had become all-encompassing, a white noise, a ringing in his ears without beginning or end. _No way out. No way out._ He longed for the release of oblivion, but death remained out of reach, despite the relentless flames feeding on his entire body. And yet, even as he burned alive, the white light inside him continued to grow and spread, seeping through every artery, vein and capillary. It kept on pushing aside the darkness, the eclipse slowly passing over, as more and more of who he was returned to him. It was brighter and stronger than the fire. The flames didn’t touch it. He squinted at his charred hands, dreamy with agony, and saw the light starting to shine through the cracks in his split and blistered skin. The realisation dawned on him - with both dreadful despair and the faintest glimmer of hope - that this was his only way out, his only way back, his only chance at salvation. _You have to burn. You have to burn until nothing remains of what you’ve become and the light is all that’s left. And you’re going to feel every second of it._

With no choice but to wait for either death or deliverance, Lister tried to focus whatever was still left of his conscious mind on the expanding light and what waited on the other side of it, while the rest of him slowly and agonisingly succumbed to the raging hellfire.

  
Rimmer felt a hand on his shoulder. He was expecting Kryten but, when he looked up, it was Cat. He looked more devastated than Rimmer had ever seen him: utterly stricken. “I’m sorry, buddy.”  
Rimmer managed a nod. “Me too,” he whispered.  
“You did all you could. We all did.”  
“I know. But...what are we going to do?” Rimmer asked, almost to himself. He looked down again at Lister’s blood-soaked body. “We _need_ him.”  
“I think from now on, Sir, we’re going to have more need of each other.” Kryten’s shoulders were drooped despondently. He put his hand on Rimmer’s other shoulder. 

Rimmer shrugged them both off and pulled Lister’s body into his arms. He cradled him close to his chest, rocking back and forth. His crewmates‘ vain attempt at comfort was not unappreciated, but it wasn't working. Without Lister they were lost, and they all knew it. Things would never be right again. And Rimmer would never be complete again. He’d lost the best part of himself. His better half. His own words haunted him. _You’re mine. Understand? From the day you stepped foot on this ship, you were mine. My assistant. My roommate. My responsibility._ His tears dripped down into Lister’s hair. _...My husband._

If only he hadn’t been so stupid, if only he’d understood what this feeling was long ago. _Thirty years - more than thirty years - we’ve been together, through thick and thin, and I will not let him take you from me._ Rimmer cursed himself. It had been right there in front of him, staring him in the face all this time, and he’d never realised. But Lister had. _You love me. I know you do...You know what we could have been._ Had the revelation been triggered by his new finely tuned vampire senses or had Lister always known? Had he spent a lifetime waiting for the scales to fall from Rimmer’s eyes, waiting for him to realise exactly what he wanted, to realise what he _had_? Either way, now it was too late. For both of them. “I can’t believe this is happening,” he whispered brokenly. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Oh Listy…”

  
On the other side of the cellar door, Lister heard voices. Familiar voices. He raised his head. Flakes of brittle charcoal fell from him as he moved. Parts of him snapped and crumbled. He paid no attention. He dragged himself towards the door, and reached for it, placing both hands against the blackened wood. The pain meant nothing now. It was distant, like it belonged to somebody else. Burnt flesh fell away from his bones, revealing two perfect hands underneath suffused with glowing light. He shook himself slightly, and more of him fell away, like a snake shedding its skin. He couldn’t feel the fire anymore. But he could feel _them_. His crew, his posse, just behind this door. They were close, so close, and they were hurting. _I’m here. Guys, I’m right here._ He heard his name, a call as clear as a bell - “Oh Listy…” - and the light inside him swelled and flared like a newborn star, radiating out from his heart, through his body, filling the burning cellar with its glow. Lister closed his eyes and breathed it in, let it flow in and out of him; then focused all his strength and energy, and harnessed the power. He channelled it through his hands and unleashed it in a final desperate blow with everything he had left. In one immense blinding cataclysmic blast, the cellar door was blown to smithereens.

  
Lister’s body seemed to grow heavier in Rimmer’s arms as he held him. Still weeping silently, he gently lay him back down on the floor. His heart skipped in shock. The blood covering Lister’s face and body was vanishing, evaporating into thin air, leaving his skin clean and bare. “What the…?” As it cleared away, he realised that the Lister lying before him now was stocky, with broad shoulders from decades of engineering repairs. His stomach was no longer flat but round and soft, the rib and hip bones no longer protruding. His face had filled out, with laughter lines around his eyes and mouth. As Rimmer watched, a few scattered hairs at his temples faded to silver. “Are you seeing this?” he whispered, awestruck. He gently lifted Lister’s limp left hand. The raw red ring mark was healing before his eyes, gradually disappearing until it was as if it had never been there. 

“Extraordinary,” Kryten murmured.  
“What does it mean?” Cat asked.  
“It means he’s Lister again.” Fresh tears fell from Rimmer’s eyes, a bittersweet sense of comfort and relief mixed with the sorrow. Whatever was to become of Lister’s soul, Edward had no hold on it any longer. “He’s free.” He reached down and gently closed Lister’s eyes, then leaned over him and kissed his forehead. “See ya, smeghead,” he whispered lovingly, stroking his cheek.

Lister’s eyes opened and fixed on his. They were brown.


	42. Chapter 42

Rimmer gasped in shock, and at the same time Lister sucked in a desperate lungful of air, like he’d just surfaced from some deep body of dark water, their bodies moving in perfect unison for a moment. Cat and Kryten both let out shrieks.

“Rimmer…?” Lister whispered breathlessly.  
“ _Asdfghjkl_ ,” Rimmer replied, his eyes almost bugging out of his head. If it was possible for a hologram to have a heart attack, he would have dropped on the spot. He shook himself. “What the...what the smeg?! You’re alive?!” He grabbed Lister’s face in his hands, staring frantically into his eyes. They were the same bottomless deep brown he’d always known and loved, without a glimmer of red. “It's you,” he blurted out. “It’s really you!”  
“Yeah.”  
“How? You were dead. I saw you die!”  
“Yeah,” Lister repeated faintly.  
“What happened???”  
“The light. I took it back.” Lister looked woozy, dazed.  
“What light?”  
“My light. He stole it from me, but I took it back, and it saved me from the fire.” He closed his eyes for a second, the terrible memory of his own incineration flashing before him again. 

“Are you...are you okay?” Rimmer asked stupidly, his voice trembling.  
Lister looked up at him and Rimmer saw horror in his eyes too terrible to speak of. “I think I’m finally going to take your advice, and get some therapy from the medi-bot,” he croaked.  
A laugh burst from Rimmer like a hiccup; “Join the smegging queue.”  
The barest suggestion of a smile passed across Lister’s pained face. “Tough week, Big Man?”  
“Yes, _actually_.” Rimmer felt his eyes welling up again. His throat tightened dangerously. Maybe Edward had been telling the truth, maybe he hadn’t; but Rimmer still could, and it was long overdue. “My husband died. _Twice_.” 

Lister blinked, staring up at him with an expression of surprise that slowly became shy hope, then gave way to a smile that broke Rimmer’s heart in the most wonderful way possible. They gazed at each other for a long moment, trying to find the words, then Rimmer gave up. He swooped down and gave Lister a kiss, then kissed him again, and again, and again, holding him like he never intended to let go.

“Oh Sir!” Kryten sobbed, throwing himself on top of them, turning it into a group hug. “I’m so glad you’re alright! I don’t know what we’d have done if we’d lost you!”  
“Kryten!” Rimmer fumed. “For your information, _this_ is having a moment. This is what having a moment looks like, you decrepit one-armed latrine lackey! And what happened to that whole ‘needing each other’ business you were spouting not two minutes ago?”  
“Oh, screw that! Mister Lister’s alive!”  
“Charming. Ooof…!” The air was knocked out of them both as Cat piled into the hug too.  
“It’s good to have you back, buddy. I missed your monkey stink.”  
“Thanks...I think.”  
“Okay, everyone off. Everyone off!” Rimmer barked, shoving them away and getting to his own feet. 

He attentively helped Lister up, eyeing him nervously. He was trembling. “Are you really okay?”  
“I’m alive. And I’m me,” Lister replied, his voice wobbling. “For now, that’s enough.” He looked around himself curiously. Returning to ordinary human senses after the supercharged intensity of being a vampire felt peculiar and disconcerting, but in many ways it was a relief. The constant sensory input had reduced to something less aggressive, the volume finally turned down on everything. He could think properly again.  
“Do you need to go to the medibay, Sir?”  
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t really know what I need.”  
“Maybe this will help.” Cat undid the silver cross and refastened it around Lister’s neck. “You can have this back now. I don’t need it anymore, and maybe you’ll feel more like you with it on.”  
“Cheers, man,” Lister said tearfully, reaching up to grip the pendant in his fist.  
“Whatever. It’s not like I care. I never liked it anyway.” Cat’s voice cracked with the strain of suppressing these distasteful monkey-like emotions. “Let’s just get out of here.”

As they headed to the door, they paused briefly to examine the charred heap of bones that was all that was left of Edward. Small embers still glowed in the rubble. Lister stared at it with an indecipherable expression, then brought his foot down hard on Edward’s skull. It disintegrated into ash and dust. “Til death us do part, smegger.” 

Rimmer put a nervous arm around him, and felt both relief and a small thrill of elation when Lister leaned into the embrace. This was new, and terrifying in its way, but at the same time felt like the only thing in his whole existence that had ever been right. It was like an invisible curtain that had been hanging between the two of them for three million years had been torn down.

“You take Mister Lister back to the sleeping quarters,” Kryten said. “He needs to rest, and I need to make a start on cleaning up this mess or the stains will never come out. Oh, if only I hadn’t left my groinal attachment upstairs.”  
“That is an image none of us needed at this exact moment of time, Kryten, but I’ll tell you this much. I don’t care how you scrape up that vile creature’s remains but I don’t want them sitting around in a dust bag. We’re taking no chances. It’s straight out the airlock, understand?”  
“Agreed, Sir. But I still don’t know what I’m going to do about this carpet...”  
“Stop going on about the smegging carpet. It is beyond salvation; we burned a hole right through it, for crying out loud. It doesn’t matter, we haven’t used this room in decades. Just lock the door and forget about it.”  
“But I’ll _know_ , Sir.”  
Rimmer growled, but Lister silently threaded their fingers together. He got the message and held his tongue. “Don’t worry about it right now, Kryters,” Lister said softly. “Just get rid of this mess. You can deal with the stains once I’ve fixed your arm. Which...er...I’m really sorry about, by the way.”  
“Think nothing of it, Sir.”

Rimmer became aware that Lister was starting to shiver, and steered him towards the door. “Come on, let’s get moving. You’re going to catch your death. I mean…” he cringed.   
Lister raised a wry eyebrow. “Three times in the space of a couple of days _does_ seem excessive.”  
“I’m glad you can joke about this, but I don’t think my nerves can handle another   
repeat. What your body has been through is insane, we need to take care of you.”  
“Hey, I told you, it’s a valid…”  
“...Reaction to trauma. Yes, you said. That doesn’t mean it’s healthy. Come on, step lively. We’ll pick up some clothes for you on the way so you don’t freeze.”  
“Okay, okay, I’m stepping!”

  
Back in the sleeping quarters, warmly ensconced in soft new pyjamas and slippers, and wrapped in a blanket on the sofa, Lister sipped at a mug of hot sweet tea. “Ahhh,” he sighed contentedly, “ _now_ I feel human again.”  
“Very funny.”  
“It wasn’t a joke.”  
“Are you hungry?”  
“No.” Lister pulled a face. Remembering the last thing Lister had eaten, Rimmer didn’t push it. He stared at him with a kind of terrible awed fascination. It twisted his mind that less than an hour ago Lister had been a fanged monstrosity consumed with bloodlust, and now he was curled up beside him, sipping tea in bunny slippers.

“Do you want to talk about what happened?” he ventured.  
“No. Not really.” An extensive montage of awfulness flitted through Lister’s mind. “Maybe we’ll talk about it at some point, but not just yet.”  
“How much do you remember?” Rimmer asked cautiously.  
“Most of it, I think. But it feels like looking back on a nightmare after you’ve woken up. There’s a degree of separation, like it’s all one step removed from reality. I think it will fade fast.”  
“That’s probably for the best.”  
“Is it?” Lister pondered. “Not remembering stuff helped land me in this mess. If I’d known sooner, if I’d remembered everything when I found the photograph, maybe things wouldn’t have gone so far. Although, having said that-” he gave a visible shudder, “-there’s more than a few things about the last few days I’ll be glad to forget.”  
“I imagine so.”  
“But not everything.” He gave Rimmer a tender smile.

Rimmer coughed awkwardly, blushing. He really wasn’t used to this. “Yes, I suppose despite the unimaginable horror of the er...general situation...there’s been something of a silver lining.”  
“You old romantic, Rimsy.”  
“Well, it’s not been a terribly romantic state of affairs. You seemed to spend quite a lot of time covered in blood, which was a tad off-putting.”  
“You’re so squeamish.”  
“Well, yes. I am. You know I am.”  
“Yes. I do.” Lister looked at him with warm affection. “And I knew you’d manage to save me anyway.”  
“You saved yourself in the end.”  
“I don’t think I could have done if you hadn’t struck the first blow. You showed me the light, I just had to follow it.”  
“Good old-fashioned teamwork.”  
“Yeah. We make a pretty good team when we’re not fighting, don’t we?” Lister reached over to play gently with Rimmer’s fingers.

Rimmer’s blush deepened. “And uh... I can’t quite believe I’m asking this but...you’re okay about Edward? You’re not...sad at all?”  
“No,” Lister replied crisply, sipping his tea.  
“It’s okay if you have mixed feelings. I’ll understand. The two of you clearly shared some kind of bond...a connection of sorts.”  
“Like I said before, I don’t know how much of what I felt for Edward was real. Maybe none of it ever was. He could have been manipulating me since the day we first met. And even if that crush on the guy from the pub was all mine, it still wasn’t real because _he_ wasn’t. The thing that stalked me that summer, that lured me to its house to kill me, that tracked me down and did all of this, I’m not sorry that thing is dead. Not even a little bit. When I think of everything he did to me…” Lister trailed off for a moment. The list of abuse was too long to catalogue. His body and mind had been violated over and over, a litany of physical and mental brutality beyond belief. “I hope wherever he is, he’s _still_ burning. I hope he burns for eternity and feels every single second.” There was an edge to Lister’s voice, cold and sharp as a machete blade, that Rimmer had never heard before. Like he knew _exactly_ what he was wishing on Edward with those words, and didn’t regret a single syllable. Rimmer gave an involuntary shiver. He changed the subject.

“You said there were others, apart from him, that I never knew about. Was that true or were you just trying to goad me?”  
“No. It’s true.” Those brown eyes watched him over the top of the mug with wary amusement.  
“Like who?”  
“You really want to get into that right now?”  
“Why did you hide it from me?”  
“Why do you think? I could ask you the same thing.”  
“There was never anyone else for me. You know that.”  
“But there was still a lot you kept back. It’s sad, isn’t it? We know each other better than anyone else ever has, and yet we both still hid so much for so long. But not anymore.” He squeezed Rimmer’s hand. “Agreed?”  
“Yes, agreed.”

Rimmer gulped, “So, what happens now? Our relationship is...not what it was.”  
“Rimsy,” Lister smiled patronisingly, “our relationship is exactly what it was. The only difference is now we’re both acknowledging it.”  
“When you put it like that, it makes all those years spent squabbling seem so petty.”  
“They were.”  
“I know, but...we wasted so much time.”  
“Yeah. But we’ve been given more. We have a second chance, man. Let’s make the most of it.” Lister tipped his head to one side, “What’s that look for?”  
“I’m trying not to hide the fact I want to kiss you again.”  
“Really? After what you just saw?” Lister raised an eyebrow.  
“I don’t care. You’ve always been a messy eater.”  
Lister gaped at him, almost too shocked to laugh. “Oh, is that so?”  
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you aren’t going to be making a habit of that kind of behaviour. But you weren’t yourself, and now you are. And...I’m just so glad that you are.”  
“Even though I’m not young and sexy anymore?” Lister teased nervously. “Even now I’m a fifty-something curry-stuffed limp cabbage leaf of a man who never goes to the gym?”  
“ _Especially_ now,” Rimmer said softly. “Is that okay?”  
“Of course, it’s okay,” Lister put down his mug and shuffled happily into Rimmer’s arms. He booped his nose gently. “After all, I’m your husband.”


	43. Chapter 43

_Whump-whump-whump. He heard the neverending pulse of the ceiling fan as he tore up the stairs and through the hallway, fuelled by the adrenaline of sheer terror. The front door loomed up in front of him and he scrabbled frantically at the catches, expecting at any moment to feel arms close around him, a furious roar against his ear as the beast dragged him back down into its lair where there would be no escape, but then the catch gave and he was out. Out into the orange light of the lamp-posts and the street that looked so normal... so ordinary...But he was too dizzy and sick to run anymore. He crumpled to the ground in the middle of the road, his head spinning like a roundabout, the taste of blood in his mouth, too weak and disorientated to even crawl any further and pure instinct kicked in to make him do the only thing he could still physically do to protect himself. He started screaming._

_He heard voices, saw the shadows of people standing around him, but no-one would come close. No-one would touch him. “Help me. Please. Help me.” Suddenly he heard an explosion. He rolled over and saw the house he had just fled from engulfed in blue flames. He stared in shock. The heat on his face triggered a feeling of panic, a memory he couldn’t place of another fire in another life, and pain; burning searing pain. He scrambled backwards, caught somewhere between terror and relief. Nothing could survive this blaze. The house and everything still in it would be destroyed. The beast, the coffins, the cellar - all gone forever. He would never have to hear the sound of that spinning fan again, never again stumble down those dark creaking steps. With a terrible groan, the house collapsed in on itself. A gargantuan cloud of black smoke rose in a great plume, towering over the street. It spread out, almost like the unfurling wings of a colossal bat, then dissipated and dissolved into the air, leaving nothing but a smoking smouldering hole in the ground, and a conspicuous gap in the terrace._

_He was never going back. He was safe. He was free._

  
“Did it go okay?” Rimmer asked anxiously the next day, as Lister entered their room.  
“It was fine, but I dont know how useful it was.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“We didn’t even talk about Edward yet. That therapy-bot is obsessed with my childhood for some reason. I told it a million times, my childhood was perfectly normal but it won’t give over.”  
“Perfectly normal?” Rimmer repeated cynically.  
“Yeah. I mean, apart from being abandoned as a baby, but I don’t even remember that. And then my foster dad dying and the whole goldfish/toilet thing, but I saw someone about that at the time, it was just a misunderstanding. And then there was the whole unpleasant business with my mum and step-dad and having to live with my gran. Until _she_ died in that awful accident, of course, and I had to spend years in that horrible orphanage school. But, all in all, I feel like I was a pretty normal kid really.”  
Rimmer stared at him, “You have no business being as well-balanced as you are, you know that?”  
“Everyone has problems.”

Rimmer gave up. “Did you sleep okay?” They’d opened out the bottom bunk into double mode and slept side-by-side, although Rimmer had spent most of the night either staring obsessively at Lister’s face or waiting on tenterhooks to see if he was going to start sleep-walking again. He’d tossed and turned a little, but had stayed put.  
“Yes,” Lister replied simply. “I think I’ll be sleeping a lot better from now on.”  
“You didn’t eat much at breakfast. It’s not like you to turn down a bacon sandwich.”  
Lister wrinkled his nose. “I think it’s going to be a while before I have an appetite for anything...meaty.”  
“Fair enough.” Rimmer winced. “A few more veggies in your diet wouldn’t go amiss. Who knows, if you keep this up they might actually finally tally up with all those near-death experiences. Although those have had a spike recently too.”  
“It’s not a near-death experience if you actually die though, is it? I can now add to my list of _actual_ -death experiences.”  
“Stick with the therapy sessions, okay?”  
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“I...er...got you a little something.” Rimmer stood up awkwardly and rummaged in his tunic pocket.  
“Really?”  
“Well...I got _us_ a little something. Two somethings. Sorry, I’m not making this very clear.” He pulled a small velvet box from his pocket. Lister’s eyes widened. 

Rimmer opened the box. Nestled inside were two gold rings. “I thought we should make it official. It seemed like it was time.”  
“Oh,” Lister said softly, his eyes welling up.  
“I mean...only if you want to, of course!” Rimmer backtracked quickly, stepping away. “Sorry, maybe I should have waited. It’s been a crazy few days, you’ve got a lot of stuff to deal with. Emotional baggage. Forget it. We’ll talk about it another time. When you’re more…” Lister grabbed hold of his arm.  
“Yes,” he whispered.  
“Yes, we’ll talk about it another time?”  
“No, smeghead! _Yes_. Yes, yes, yes!”  
“Oh.” Rimmer blinked. “Well...splendid.”

He plucked a ring from the box and slid it onto Lister’s eagerly outstretched hand. “I know we don’t have anyone ordained to perform a fancy service, but I think it all seems a bit unnecessary at this point, don’t you?”  
Lister looked up at him, eyes shining. “I do.”  
“Ah. Yes. Indeedy.” Lister took the other ring from him and slid it onto Rimmer’s finger. “I do too.”  
Lister examined the ring, delighted. “I love it.”  
“I’m glad. I played it safe and went for the traditional band of gold.” Rimmer’s eyes darkened and he scowled for a second. “After all, what kind of cheap tight-fisted bastard gives you a _silver_ wedding ring?”  
Lister snorted tearfully and threw his arms around Rimmer’s neck, “Not _my_ husband, that’s for sure.”

They kissed. It went on for some time. When they drew apart, Lister’s eyes were burning, in a way that only his could. “I love you,” he said quietly.  
“I love you too.”  
Lister’s eyes darted towards the still-extended bunk. “Want to make it _really_ official?”  
“You mean...consummate the marriage?” Rimmer’s eyebrows lifted. “It’s only six- thirty.”  
“So?”  
“Aren’t you supposed to wait for the wedding ‘night’?”  
“We’ve waited long enough.” Lister tugged him seductively towards the bed. “I _want_ you.”  
“And there was me thinking being a vampire was making you slutty. Turns out you didn’t need any help, you were just slutty all along.”  
“Yep, that was all me. And I meant every word.” 

Lister drew him down into the bed. “I told you, didn’t I? ‘We’ll kill him together and then both live forever in blissful happiness’. And I was right.”  
“Til death us do part?” A corner of Rimmer’s mouth turned up, a little sadly.  
“Nah,” Lister shook his head. “I think Edward was right about one thing, just not in the way he thought. I’m not supposed to die. Not really. All those near-death experiences, all those times I’ve actually died, and yet here I still am. I was spared for a purpose, but not for him. When the time comes, you know what to do.” He traced the H on Rimmer’s head with one gentle finger.  
“Really?” Rimmer’s brows knitted. “You’re sure that’s what you want?”  
“Yeah. I think that’s how it’s supposed to be. Maybe that’s even the reason all this happened, to bring us together and guide me towards my real destiny.”  
“Which is?”  
“Like I told you. ‘I’ll be young again, you can be whatever age you want, and we’ll make up for all that lost time.’ I think it was a prophecy of sorts. I saw it. I _felt_ it.” He stretched up and gave Rimmer a kiss. “ _That’s_ my destiny. You and me, together, to the end of time.” He gazed up into Rimmer’s eyes. “How does that sound?”  
Rimmer felt his eyes welling up. “It sounds too good to be true,” he said hoarsely.

They sank down together onto the mattress of their bunk, and began their journey into eternity.


End file.
